Anavex Life Sciences Corp (AVXL)

[Investor2014]

Why do some mice models accurately predict success in humans but others do not?

First of all accurately predicting success in humans needs some weighting applied, which is certainly not 100%.

Evolution has had a long time to diverge and become very complex, culminating thus far in homo sapiens. Many genes and the proteins they encode for, e.g. SIGMAR1 and the Sigma-1 Receptor protein, are "Highly Preserved" throughout evolution and branches of it. Mamalian species like murines and humans share a lot of genes and biological functions and yet most us frequenting this message board are quite different to murines.

Human biology have more and different complex pathways of interactions than murines, as we have just seen a fraction of referenced in this recent Anavex PR First Entire Clinical Alzheimer’s Gene Pathway Data.

Not all of our genes are shared with e.g. murines as our evolution has diverge over millions of years from murines. You can explore this brilliant interactive graph to find the common ancestor between us and murines and get some idea how much has happened in between - that's why!

An improvement to this challenge is transgenic murines, where certain genes have been modified/inserted to emulate some snippet of human biology. For example the McGill-R-Thy1-APP rats referenced in the poster from this Anavex PR Long-lasting Effect of ANAVEX®3-71 Prevents Cognitive Decline in Animal Model of AD at AAIC 2022 are better model than a wild type rat, but in some very narrow way.

For example the Rett transgenic murines are quite a good model of that neurodevelopmental disease, as just one specific gene is know to cause Rett.

Great apes might be a better model of human biology, but ethical and practical considerations makes research with murines a preferred choice. Sometime in the future I believe our understanding of biology and in turn medicine will increase to a point where some new treatment or better still prevention can be modelled in silico. DeepMind and AlphaFold is one step towards that goal.