Non-human primates are only used at the very end of the therapeutic development process. They're used for to look at a drug's safety profile, get an idea of max tolerated dose, and efficacy (though in not sure how NHP cancer studies work).
Almost all preclinical work is done in mice. They're relatively cheap, breed quickly, and we have tons of reagents for them.
There are a number of models for studying cancer in mice. The easy ones are transplant models where we inject tumor cells (cell lines) into the mouse and go from there. There are induced models as well which will more closely mimic the development of cancer in in patients, but these can take a long time.
jjanczy62 t1_iw36l2q wrote
Reply to How do medical researchers obtain lab animals with diseases like specific forms of cancer which arise spontaneously? Do they raise thousands of apes and hope some eventually develop the disease? by userbrn1
Non-human primates are only used at the very end of the therapeutic development process. They're used for to look at a drug's safety profile, get an idea of max tolerated dose, and efficacy (though in not sure how NHP cancer studies work).
Almost all preclinical work is done in mice. They're relatively cheap, breed quickly, and we have tons of reagents for them.
There are a number of models for studying cancer in mice. The easy ones are transplant models where we inject tumor cells (cell lines) into the mouse and go from there. There are induced models as well which will more closely mimic the development of cancer in in patients, but these can take a long time.