A major bottleneck in much human disease research and drug development is the lack of larger animal models that more accurately simulate human disease in the pre-clinical stages.
For example, although the study of the cardiovascular system has benefited significantly from the use of gene-targeted and transgenic mouse models, small rodents do not accurately reflect human cardiovascular physiology.
To generate more appropriate and useful animal models for better mimicking the human cardiovascular system, it’s beneficial to explore larger mammalian models for CVD.
Rabbits and pigs are good models for CVD research because their cardiovascular systems are similar to those of humans.
However, the use of large animal models has been hindered by a lack of availability of embryonic stem cell lines. These lines are highly amenable to genetic manipulation to create necessary research models.
Because of the compelling need to address this hurdle in biomedical research and drug development, we have built a research team with leading expertise in producing gene-targeted (knockout and knockin) and transgenic rabbits and pigs as model animals.
Currently, successful production of gene-targeted rabbits and pigs has been achieved only by a small group of researchers around the world, including the scientists at CAMTraST.
We are committed to maintaining this leadership position through innovation and collaboration.