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> The team, including Juntendo University professor Toru Minamino, confirmed that mice administered with the vaccine showed decreases in the zombie cells, medic
by pezzana 5y ago
> The team, including Juntendo University professor Toru Minamino, confirmed that mice administered with the vaccine showed decreases in the zombie cells, medically known as senescent cells, and in areas affected by arterial stiffening.
By now this has become a trope. "Researchers develop new treatment for {UNTREATED_DISEASE}" ... in mice.
Mouse models of human disease are very limited in their predictive ability. There's a lot of research that needs to follow this before there's even a hope of a human trial, let alone vaccine. And the failure rate for treatments at the mouse stage is quite high.
Some of the comments on this thread treat this research paper as the announcement of an an imminent anti-aging vaccine. It's not.
- arboghast 5y agoThere are many imminent aging therapies in clinical trials though or upcoming. Not saying it will reverse it but it may slow it down and compress the morbidity period. Such therapies include the promising Mayo Clinic trial on using large doses of Fisetin to get rid of senescent cells, or similarly Dasatnib + Quercetin, gene therapy like PGC-1a for maintaining muscle mass in older age, epigenetic reprogramming, mTOR inhibitors like Sirolimus or other rapalogues, etc. So it’s very likely that some of the advances we see today that are still in clinical stage will hit the market in 5 to 15 years. Edit: typo
- dbcurtis 5y agoGotta admit though, there has never been a better time to be a mouse.
- netizen-936824 5y agoReally? Because they get experimented on and then slaughtered by the thousands
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rixed 5y agoActually, by the million (monthly) https://www.science.org/content/article/how-many-mice-and-rats-are-used-us-labs-controversial-study-says-more-100-million https://www.science.org/content/article/how-many-mice-and-ra...
- rmbyrro 5y agoAt least some get lucky and sometimes slow down aging - for example - when things work out. I don't want to think about what the others go through when things go wrong, though...
- sva_ 5y agoPretty sure they'll still get killed once the experiment is completed.
- majkinetor 5y agoThe term used in papers is often 'sacrificed'.
- majkinetor 5y agoYou forgot tiny detail that they live in prison for entire life eating equivalent of Mc Donalds or worse.
- netizen-936824 5y agoThis is true. Everything held constant nothing changing and its far too cold. Its worse than being in US prison, somehow
- throwamon 5y agoJust knowing I'd have guaranteed food and housing would make my life less miserable than it is now. Oh, and I love McDonald's.
- delecti 5y agoUnless they're "participants" in an experiment related to McDonald's, it's probably closer to say they spend their life eating the equivalent of Soylent. Though 1/3 of my meals are Soylent, so even that doesn't seem entirely terrible.
- rewq4321 5y agoThe food/diet component of their existence is really the absolute least of their problems.
- cblconfederate 5y agoby mouse life standards, they live like kings
- majkinetor 5y agoYou mean, by what some humans think is mouse standard.
- mensetmanusman 5y agoSounds like suburb utopia.
- beenBoutIT 5y agoPrior to that inevitable slaughter some of them get to experience things that most humans never get to experience. Mice on MDMA for example could easily be having the best time that any mouse has ever had.
- rewq4321 5y ago> 0.01% of them got to have some cool hallucinations though - look on the bright side! Hmm
- hungryforcodes 5y agoSo we should start with mould? What are you saying exactly? We have to start somewhere...
- loeg 5y agoI just want the breathless headlines to include “in mice” (or appropriate animal) if it wasn’t in humans.
- hungryforcodes 5y agoOK got it! Both of you have well described it -- and I agree with you. :)
- hn_throwaway_99 5y agoI didn't interpret the parent comment as arguing against mice models, just that there is a huge gap between finding something that works in mice and then applying it to humans (with tons and tons of false starts), that any pronouncements that imply that human treatments are on the horizon are premature.
- Waterluvian 5y agoThis is well known and very well established. We don’t like experimenting on humans. It’s kind of ghoulish and evil. I get what you’re saying but it’s safe to assume that this concept is already baked into almost everyone’s discussion on matters like this.
- pcrh 5y ago>It’s kind of ghoulish and evil. Experiments on humans happen very frequently. They're called "clinical trials".
- cblconfederate 5y agoor A/B tests
- Waterluvian 5y agoAfter a huge amount of non human testing.
- Aspos 5y agoI am curious, why are they still using mice and not tiny monkeys? If they are using some animals, why use random mice and not a primate? Any specific reason other than tradition?
- whynaut 5y agodwonvoting for curiosity is dangerous. If one finds this comment distasteful, it is much more valuable for future readers to explain why, rather than downvote and keep scrolling.
- antognini 5y agoFunny enough, The Economist just had an article about this and an attempt to make lemurs a model species: https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/a-tiny-primate-may-join-the-ranks-of-the-worlds-model-organisms/21806681 https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/a-tiny-prim...
- s1artibartfast 5y agoMostly legal and ethical barriers are vastly higher for non human primates
- Aspos 5y agoSounds like an opportunity for those living in friendlier jurisdictions. Lab-as-a-service in a warm country with a relaxed legal regime for biomedical studies?
- Hokusai 5y ago> in mice It will be interesting to know how long can we extend that live of mice. I guess that before immortal human beings we should achieve mice immortality.
- kevinalexbrown 5y agoYes and this response has also become a trope. It’s generically universal to nearly any early result.
- glenstein 5y agoCompletely agree that the response is a trope at this point. I've seen more comment section finger wagging in response to science articles, offering such wisdom as correlation isn't causation, XYZ "isn't a panacea", research into treatments to mitigate or avoid cancer "don't cure cancer", statistical confidence of 95% falls short of absolute proof, and any number of extraneous add-ons that make caricatures of the research and then bat those caricatures down. It reminds me of this quip from the Onion, back in 2009: "All that in just six years? Wow, that's so amazing. If you can't tell, I'm being sarcastic. And I'm being sarcastic because I don't understand the significance of the study." https://www.theonion.com/cow-genome-outlined-1819560275 https://www.theonion.com/cow-genome-outlined-1819560275
- cblconfederate 5y agodevelopers expect scaling up to be like Ctrl-C Ctrl-V
- midjji 5y agoEven the ever exaggerating pop sci article does not mention an increase in lifespan... At face value this seems more like evidence against the senescent cells theory of aging.
- the__alchemist 5y agoThis is basic science; early research. Not immediately applicable, and harder for many people to see the benefit, but important. Humans share much fundamental biology with other mammals. Moue tests aren't guaranteed to be directly applicable, but it's what we've got.
- ekianjo 5y ago> Humans share much fundamental biology with other mammals. It's like saying a rock and a plant share fundamental atoms with each other. Biology even from one close specie to another is so mindbogglingly unpredictable that we don't have good models. In 2021.
- rmbyrro 5y agoI guess if it does NOT work on mice, it's highly unlikely to work on humans? In this case, it might be good predictor of failure, which can save a lot of money. Just speculating... Also, if something really bad goes on mice, we can avoid having that happening to humans. Which I would also value a lot. I mean, it seems to me experimenting on mice might be worth it.
- ekianjo 5y ago> I guess if it does NOT work on mice, it's highly unlikely to work on humans? There is virtually no relationship whatsoever between what works in mice and humans. Such headlines are completely ridiculous by now: the track record of applicability is a train wreck.
- BizarroLand 5y agoNo, this is wrong. The point is to figure out what chemicals react with living creatures in what way. We're not creating super-mice, we're not making the rats of NIMH, we're blindly fumbling about for one of the septillions of light switches we haven't flipped yet to see what it does. Figuring these things out is hard. Humans are good at doing things they've done before, or imitating actions they've seen or heard before, but learning something entirely new is very very difficult. We have more scientists alive and working on problems now than ever before in human history and still the mill of innovation turns slowly.
- JamesBarney 5y agoThis very much depends on the mouse model of disease. Obesity drugs for instance are highly predictive.
- twic 5y ago> By now this has become a trope. "Researchers develop new treatment for {UNTREATED_DISEASE}" ... in mice. And a twitter account: https://twitter.com/justsaysinmice https://twitter.com/justsaysinmice https://jamesheathers.medium.com/in-mice-explained-77b61b598218 https://jamesheathers.medium.com/in-mice-explained-77b61b598...
- _ph_ 5y agoI keep wondering if future generations will assume we had a special worship for mice considering how many diseases we tried to cure in mice :p
- simplestats 5y agoOh no, future generations will curse our barbarity for doing the experiments (from the comfort of their greatly-extended lifespans).
- cblconfederate 5y agothe first engineered superintelligent mouse will discover that humans have solved all his problems and will make a mouse pharma empire out of their discoveries.