Validating alternative models to cats and dogs for heartworm drug testing

心丝虫是一种寄生虫病，在猫和狗在世界上许多地区。在北方欧洲发现了更多的感染病例，英国也发现了病例。如果不治疗，心丝虫可能是致命的。目前用于预防心丝虫感染心脏的药物由于耐药寄生虫的发展而不起作用。用于治疗心丝虫的药物会产生致命的副作用。动物保健公司正在开发新的心丝虫药物。目前，除了在猫或狗身上进行实验，我们没有任何其他方法来测试新药。有时，猫或狗会因为感染心丝虫而变得非常虚弱。在这个项目中，我们将开发猫和狗的细胞培养和小鼠替代品，以支持心丝虫的早期幼虫生长。我们将选择最好的培养物和小鼠品系，并检查两种不同类型的药物是否能在这些新模型中产生预期的效果。当我们在项目中达到这一点时，我们将提倡采用这些替代品来实现一系列重要的潜在目标。用户包括测试实验室和动物保健公司。我们计算出，这些替代模型将减少用于心丝虫药物测试我们还估计，在药物测试中使用小鼠而不是猫或狗将通过避免可能引起严重疼痛和痛苦的长时间感染来改进测试。

Heartworm is a parasitic worm disease in cats and dogs in many areas of the world. More infections are being identified in Northern Europe and cases have been identified in the UK. Left untreated, heartworm is potentially lethal. Current drugs used to prevent heartworm from infecting the heart are not working as well because of the development of drug resistant parasites. Drugs used to treat heartworms cause side effects which can be lethal. New heartworm drugs are being developed by animal healthcare companies. Currently, we don't have any alternative way of testing new drugs other than to experiment on cats or dogs. Sometimes cats or dogs will become very ill as a result of being infected with heartworm for the purposes of testing drugs.In this project we will develop cell culture and mouse alternatives to cats and dogs to support the early larval growth of heartworm. We will select the best cultures and mouse strain and check to see whether two different types of drug can give the expected effects in these new models.When we get to this point in the project we will advocate the adoption of these alternatives to a range of important potential end-users including testing laboratories and animal health care companies.We calculate that these alternative models will reduce overall numbers of animals used in heartworm drug testing. We also estimate that using mice instead of cats or dogs in drug testing will refine testing by avoiding long duration infections that can induce severe pain and suffering.