Scientists present a new screening method that makes it easier to test cancer drugs by detecting tumors that were previously too small to detect. The transparent mouse plays an important role in this.
Professor Ali Erturk and his team actually succeeded in making a dead rat transparent in 2018, but on Monday he published a useful application of it in nature biology.
With the help of specific chemicals, his team succeeded in making certain tissues visible so they could be examined in detail.
According to Erturk, their method yields much more detail than current scanning techniques. For example, cancerous tumors that have just appeared can be seen.
Erturk said to BBC. He stresses that current drugs do not target these small tumors because they were not visible at all. As a result, he says, in some cases the cancer can return after a few years.
The new method, which makes the body transparent, could in principle be used for any animal. Therefore, in theory, human tissues or organs can also be made transparent.
Mice are made “transparent” by removing all the fat and pigment from the body. This is done through a chemical process. He said that the mouse’s body looks like a transparent plastic toy after this operation BBC.
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