We still don’t know how to read mice minds

And that’s creating a major problem in drug development, according to one biotech CEO.

Studies on mice are an irreplaceable part of the search for new drugs. If a given treatment, say, shrinks tumors or heals wounds in mice, it’s all the more likely to do so for people, too. And if it doesn’t work on animals, it’s probably not worth spending money on a clinical trial.

But that paradigm gets problematic when it comes to neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s, whose symptoms are measured not by measuring tumors but by assessing how well the mice actually think. That creates serious issues for scientists trying to vet new treatments, Rodin Therapeutics CEO Adam Rosenberg writes in STAT, and it might help explain the dearth of novel therapies.

“It is hard to argue with a straight face that assessing how speedily mice find their way around a maze appropriately models the complex interplay of cognitive, behavioral, and functional symptoms in human diseases such as Alzheimer’s or autism spectrum disorder,” Rosenberg writes.

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