Labanimal

The July episode of 3-Minute 3Rs from the North American 3Rs Collaborative (www.na3rsc.org), the NC3Rs (www.nc3rs.org.uk), and Lab Animal (www.nature.com/laban) Papers; 1. https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/5/eaav6528 2. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-44705-2 3. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-45464-w [NC3Rs] Colorectal cancer is particularly hard to treat, and only 11% of patients whose tumours have metastasised survive five years after diagnosis. Mouse models that incorporate patient tissue are widely used in drug discovery, but they’re both expensive and time consuming, and often don’t fully represent human disease. A team at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, led by Erdem Bangi, developed a screening platform using Drosophila to test potential therapies for a patient whose cancer had proved resistant to treatment. The team identified nine genes that were driving the progression of the disease, so they modified orthologs of these genes in the flies. They were able to