When a virus takes over the world, humans are not the only ones that get the most affected. Animals -- specifically lab animals-- also gets roughly lessened as various labs all over the world demand a huge number of them to be used as a tester in formulating Coronavirus cure or to find out more about the disease.
Coronavirus doesn't just affect humans; experimental animals also face danger
Rats, monkeys, and even ferrets are the most commonly used animals in experiments done in laboratories. However, these animals now face the danger of extinction since most labs around the world demand a huge population of them. According to a report on the Nature website, laboratories now demand a higher number of experimental animals in order to find a cure for the prevailing Coronavirus in the world.
Since these lab animals mimic human DNA, most of them are being tested for initial vaccines in order to know if their creation is effective in fighting against viruses. Unfortunately, this requires a lot of tests that force labs to order for more lab animals.
"There's going to be a need not just for one animal model, but multiple," says David O'Connor, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "We can try to learn as much as possible as quickly as possible and integrate that with the emerging volume of data from the clinic."
Labs demand a specific type of rat to used against Coronavirus
As reported, there seemed to be a particular type of mouse that most laboratories are now requesting on breeding facilities.
The Jackson Laboratory, a mouse-breeding facility located in Bar Harbor, Maine, said that they are recently rushing to produce stocks of 'transgenic' mouse or mice that "produce a human version of the protein ACE2, which the virus is causing the outbreak, SARS-CoV-2, uses to enter cells."
As of now, they are receiving more than 50 requests from different labs around the world to produce over 3,000 transgenic mice.
"We've been overwhelmed with requests," says Cathleen Lutz, a neuroscientist who heads the institute's mouse repository.
It turns out that normal mice are resistant to infection, which requires breeding centers to create more transgenic mice as per the request of labs.
China tested the 'transgenic mice' and created successful findings
A team of researchers in China already acquired the 'transgenic mice,' and it was said to be one of the perfect animals that showed immune responses to their created vaccines.
Qin Chuan, a virologist at Peking Union Medical College in Beijing who co-led the study, "identified immune responses in infected mice that could guide vaccine development. And, in unpublished work, the team also identified several drugs that slowed the virus's replication and limited the animals' weight loss."
As of now, there is still no accurate and specific vaccine against Coronavirus. The disease already infected over 100,000 people around the world and killed more than 4,000 confirmed cases.
