Complex neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's require translatable animal models that reproduce aspects of the human disease pathology and enable researchers to understand the biological processes at work. In this article in Nature, experts from Taconic Biosciences and LifeCanvas discuss the challenges of selecting, breeding, and employing the most relevant animal model to study neurodegenerative disease. Dr. Andrea Leonardi, a Taconic scientific program manager, shares her insights on proper colony management of these unique models, while Dr. Moriah Jacobson, a Taconic field applications scientist, discusses advanced imaging studies that are yielding critical insights on Taconic's ARTE10 and APPSWE mouse models, which are vital to studying Alzheimer's disease:
"The rising incidence of neurodegenerative conditions is putting pressure on researchers to better understand them, and to develop more translational models to help that process...Given the varied, interrelated mechanisms involved in neurodegenerative disease, it is critical to be able to study one mechanism or hypothesis at a time in a translatable model."
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