From: rms@acsu.buffalo.edu (Robert M. Straubinger)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals
Subject: Re: Animal Research (mouse screens?)
Date: 3 Oct 92 03:05:28 GMT
Organization: SUNY/Buffalo Pharmaceutics

In article <BvBrt1.97@wpg.com> russ@wpg.com (Russell Lawrence) writes:
>
>Russell Lawrence writes:
           [deleted]
    [The National Institutes of Health/National Cancer Institute's] 
rl>     .... live mouse screens [for anticancer agents]
   > were abandoned years ago in favor of live tissue screens.  
      [deletion and transposition:   ]
RL >They decided ... to use more types of
   >tumors at the base tier of the research, *after* replacing live mice
   >with human tumor cells growing in vitro.

So from your response, it would seem that the use of mice (with
implanted tumors) has not been "abandoned" at the National Cancer
Institute as a means of searching for anti-cancer drugs; tissue culture
is now a primary screen and (specially-bred) mice implanted with human
tumors is the followup screen for promising agents? It would seem that
'abandoned' is hyperbole.

>From article <BvBH48.Eyn@acsu.buffalo.edu>, by rms@acsu.buffalo.edu (Robert M. Straubinger):
>rs>    ... you mention that the NIH screens
>rs> *did* uncover agents active against leukemias and lymphomas.  [...]
>rs> ...  If memory serves, the tumors are P388 and L1210.
>rs> L1210 is a leukemia and P388 is either a lymphoma or a leukemia. ..
>rs>  ... it would seem, at any rate, that the NIH screens actually
>rs> may have been quite useful, and the fault of NCI was to use too few
>rs> different types of mouse tumors, ie they should have expanded the panel
>rs> of tumors in the screen to include breast, ovarian, colon, and the other
>rs> great killers.
>
RL>I agree that the use of other tumors at the base tier of the 
  >screening process could have been more rewarding, albeit 
  >significantly more costly and burdensome.  Would you agree with 
  >me that it was fallacious to assume that a compound with 
  >therapeutic effectiveness in treating P388 would be equally 
  >effective in treating the full range of human cancer?

    If they had asked me, *I* wouldn't have done it that way. Maybe.
'Fallacious' is somewhat judgemental; I think people in the past
took the very best approaches they could think of in searching through
hundreds of thousands of naturally-occurring and synthetic compounds that
*might* lead to a new therapy for cancer.  And note that we seem to agree
that there have been some successes in therapeutics based on the screens.
Our understanding of the process of cancer is now exceedingly sophistiated,
compared to what people understood when the 'live mouse screens' were devised.
And at present, we're only at the threshold of understanding.
In a way, belittling past efforts to solve a difficult problem is like
ridiculing the Wright brothers for not using jet engines and aluminum
airframes. At least one mentality behind anticancer efforts in that era
was the idea that brute-force screening would identify active anticancer
compounds in the same way that it was possible to find the extraordinary
range of antibiotics for bacterial and fungal organisms that we have today.
Regrettably, it's turned out that there are very few exploitable differences
between us and our cancers. That wasn't known 'back then', I think.
    That said, I'll reiterate my personal distaste for mass screenings,
animal-based or otherwise. After several decades, it should be clear
that difficult problems may be more likely solved by thought than
by brute force. We've been trying brute force for years. 

RL >If memory serves, the transition [from live mouse screens as a 
   > primary screen to cell culture as a primary screen]
   >took place between 1986 and 1987.
   >When did you leave grad school? :-)
'84.

Bob Straubinger
Dept of Pharmaceutics
SUNY/Buffalo          "Above are my opinions, not those of SUNY"
rms@acsu.buffalo.edu  "  and certainly not of the NIH or NCI   "
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals