New Swiss technology to spare laboratory animals

New Swiss technology to save laboratory animals Keystone-SDA

Researchers at the University of Zurich are using a new technology to reduce the number of laboratory animals used in drug development.

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Instead of testing new substances individually on mice, they can now test 25 antibodies simultaneously in a single mouse.

This speeds up the drug development process and reduces the number of animals required, according to a press release issued by the University of Zurich (UZH) on Tuesday.

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In order to analyse so many antibodies simultaneously, the researchers have developed a type of barcode with which each antibody can be individually labelled. These barcodes, known as flycodes, consist of defined fragments of proteins.

After administration to the mouse, the individual antibody candidates can be separated and analysed separately, as the scientists showed in a study published in the journal Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences (“PNAS”).

Many drugs are antibodies

“Our results show that the Flycodes technology provides high-quality preclinical data on the antibodies studied. We obtain much more data with fewer mice and of better quality, as the analyses can be compared directly,” study leader Markus Seeger was quoted as saying in the press release.

Many modern drugs are based on antibodies. These proteins very specifically recognise a certain structure on the surface of cells and bind to it. For the study, the researchers used antibodies that have already been approved as drugs.

Translated from German with DeepL/mga

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