Research involving laboratory animals at UCLA has led to many medical breakthroughs that improve people's lives. Following are some examples.

 

Pediatric heart valve
Children with congenital heart defects may soon have an alternative to invasive and risky open heart surgery. UCLA researchers are developing a heart valve using super-memory, shape-elastic metal alloy that can be loaded into a catheter, inserted into a vein in the groin area, guided into place and deployed at a precise location within the heart. To test the device, researchers are using pigs, whose circulatory system closely resembles that of humans.

 

UCLA researchers use miniaturized positron emission tomography (MicroPET) to track the effects of gene therapy for cancer in living rodents. The animal research has led to new methods of imaging gene expression, which directly affects the safety and efficacy of gene-therapy trials on human cancer patients. The same work is enhancing our basic knowledge of cancer biology and enabling the development of new treatment strategies by allowing researchers to better understand how tumors grow and spread.

 

The bacterium that causes tuberculosis currently infects 2 billion people worldwide, and 8 million new cases of active tuberculosis develop annually. New vaccines to combat the disease are being developed using guinea pigs, which are highly susceptible to infection by the tuberculosis bacterium and develop a disease remarkably similar to tuberculosis in humans. UCLA researchers have developed the first vaccine in 100 years that is more potent than the current vaccine.

 

A disease of the large arteries, atherosclerosis is the primary cause of heart disease and stroke. Animal models have been crucial to a better understanding of the disease and to developing new treatments, as atherosclerosis cannot be reproduced or studied in detail in tissue culture and the examination of the mechanisms involved in its initiation and progression in human beings is not feasible. The research has led to the development of a highly promising peptide to treat atherosclerosis. UCLA researchers also have used mouse genetics to reveal how oxidation and inflammation contribute to atherosclerosis and to discover new pathways and genes important in the manifestation of the disease.

 

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in industrialized societies worldwide. The restitution hypothesis, a new concept for developing drugs to treat cardiac fibrillation - one of the most common forms of arrhythmia, or irregular heartbeat -- was based on animal research at UCLA. The hypothesis states that the extent to which cardiac electrical activity shortens as the heart rate increases (restitution) plays a key role in whether fibrillation occurs.

 

UCLA researchers using rats to seek new ways of preventing organ rejection in transplant recipients have identified a gene that helps prevent a recipient's immune system from rejecting organs. In addition, promising allochimeric-therapy research seeks to reduce the dosage or shorten the regimen of immunosuppressive medications used to prevent rejection.

 

UCLA oncology specialists have used specially bred mice to design more effective radiation therapies for cancer, with minimal side effects for healthy body tissue. Investigators approximate the clinical situation of patients' daily radiation treatment in mice in order to evaluate the long-term response of the body, organ by organ. The mice used in the research are of a strain known for their longevity and are carefully protected from infection so they will live long enough to be evaluated.

 

Investigation of the fetal circulatory system of sheep has helped reduce health complications in human newborns. Pioneering studies in fetal sheep by UCLA obstetricians provided some of the earliest clues to the functioning of the ductus arteriosus, which connects major vessels in the fetal heart. Although the ductus normally closes shortly after birth, it can remain open in premature infants, increasing the heart's workload and even leading to heart failure. Subsequent research by pediatricians led to the development of drugs that force the ductus closed, a safe alternative to open-heart surgery. Through recent research in pregnant and newborn sheep, obstetricians have also demonstrated how high blood pressure during pregnancy can interfere with fetal blood flow, increasing the risk of problems at birth; these studies have paved the way for several new drugs now being tested with success to manage hypertension during pregnancy.

 

The development of the total artificial heart would not have been possible without first testing the device on animals. The first phase of trials on humans began with the implantation of the device in a patient at Jewish Hospital in Louisville, Ky., on July 2, 2001, followed by five more implants at additional medical centers participating in the total artificial heart clinical trials, including UCLA Medical Center. The study is ongoing.