THE creation of a lab rat with no functioning immune system is opening up the possibility of more realistic testing of cancer treatments, transplantation techniques and other therapies. Such animals are useful to researchers because the immune response in a normal animal can complicate test results.
Until now, mice have been the only lab animals readily available with no immune system. They are produced by knocking out key genes in mouse embryonic stem cells required for the immune system to function. Development of a rat equivalent has lagged behind, as the first "knockout rats" were not engineered until late last year.
Now researchers at Transposagen Biopharmaceuticals of Lexington, Kentucky, have announced that they have made what they call a "SCID rat" - so called because the animal's lack of an immune system leaves it with a condition resembling a human syndrome called severe combined immune deficiency. The SCID ...
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