13. Of Humanized Mice and COVID-19

Lab Rat Chat

Lab Rat Chat - Episode 13 with Dr. Joanne Turner and Dr. Luis Martinez-Sobrido from Texas Biomedical Research Institute
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In this episode of Lab Rat Chat, Danielle and I had the pleasure of talking to two guests, another first for us, with Dr. Joanne Turner and Dr. Luis Martinez-Sobrido from Texas Biomedical Research Institute. We chatted about their recent development of humanized mice to help us understand some of the many complexities surrounding SARS-CoV-2, as well as simply talking about some general mysteries about this COVID-19 disease that we hear about in the media. For a more in-depth read on their COVID-19 research, check out the link below in the 'Resources & Links' section.

Topics discussed in this episode:

• Dr. Turner’s and Dr. Martinez-Sobrido’s extensive backgrounds and experiences throughout their education and careers.
• Details regarding the humanized mice they’ve developed and why they’re a good model to study COVID-19.
• Information about the infectious dose of COVID-19 and why children seem less susceptible, and how using this mouse model may help give clues on these mysteries.
• Ways to approach talking about animal research with the public and how the public should perceive the field of biomedical research.

Notable quotes:

“Altogether what we find is these transgenic mice pretty much represent a very nice and good small animal model to study COVID-19 pathogenesis and to study some of these approaches that we are trying to develop at Texas Biomed in terms of vaccine development and therapeutics for the treatment of these viral infections”

“These transgenic mice will be a great model to study if you can get re-infected once you have primarily been infected with the virus.”

“I think some of those apparent contradictions are because it’s a new virus, it’s unknown, and we’re working at it very quickly and we’re putting information out as we find it, so often our initial observation get modified when we learn more. So that’s why it seems like, in science, we’re sometimes changing our minds, but that’s because we gathered new information in a robust way.”

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Resources & Links:

• Texas Biomedical Research Institute (https://www.txbiomed.org/)
• Texas Biomed Humanized Mice Press Release (https://www.txbiomed.org/news-press/news-releases/sars-cov-2-rodent-study/)
• Americans for Medical Progress (https://www.amprogress.org/)

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