THE FIGHT AGAINST ALZHEIMER’S

GETTING HELP FROM CLONED PIGS

GUINEA PIGS AND ALZHEIMER’S:

A change of the law in Denmark now allows animals to be cloned for research purposes. A group of cloned pigs will form the root stock in the fight against Alzheimer’s.

A couple of plump, contented and pregnant sows housed at the Danish Institute of Agricultural Sciences’ centre for animal husbandry and genetics, near Foulum in Jutland, will farrow a litter of piglets which could perhaps herald the beginning of the end of the battle against Alzheimer’s. The piglets, due to be born in June 2006, will be the first cloned pigs in Denmark. Together with some transgenetically cloned pigs which will be born later in the summer, they will form the root stock of the first attempts to solve the riddle of the feared age-related disease.

Great opportunities
“For the first time, we hope to get a research tool which can give us insight into the development of Alzheimer’s,” says Assistant Professor Arne Lund Jørgensen, MD, Dr.Med.Sci., Department of Human Genetics, University of Aarhus. “With insight into the development of the disease we can start thinking of treatment opportunities and treatment drugs. The cloned pigs are the first step on the way, and I am convinced there are great opportunities ahead.” 

“For the first time, we hope to get a research tool which can give us insight into the development of Alzheimer’s,” says Assistant Professor Arne Lund Jørgensen, MD, Dr.Med.Sci., Department of Human Genetics, University of Aarhus.

Arne Lund Jørgensen is one of Denmark’s most knowledgeable research scientists on Alzheimer’s, but the research has been hampered by a lack of suitable test animals.

“Many ethical, moral and technical problems have barred the way,” says Lund Jørgensen. “But a change in the law in Denmark in 2005 has now made it possible to clone test animals for research. The pig is a perfect choice because it has a biological structure resembling that of a human being.”

Pigs with Alzheimer’s
Alzheimer’s is not usually inherited directly, except for a small number of the people afflicted by the disease. In these cases, a mutated gene has been found which causes Alzheimer’s to develop.

“Because we know this special gene, we have been able to construct it synthetically, and incorporate it into the genetic material of a porcine cell. When we can determine that the cell reads the mutated gene correctly, which in all probability causes Alzheimer’s, then the cell material is used in what is called a transgenic cloned pig”.

Based on the growth and life expectancy of pigs, including the fact that a pig reaches sexual maturity at around 6 months, it has been calculated that the transgenetically cloned pigs will start to develop Alzheimer’s when they are around 1 year old.

“With both conventionally cloned and transgenetically cloned pigs, we will be able to systematically chart the development among the two groups,” says Lund Jørgensen. “And because pigs in many ways are comparable to humans, research into their behavioural changes and changes in their memory and sense of locality becomes possible in a far better way than we have so far been able to achieve. In addition there is naturally the clinical research in which the pharmaceutical industry especially shows a great interest.”