树鼩在生物医学研究中的优势与挑战

Advantages and Challenges of Tree Shrews in Biomedical Research

动物模型是研究人类疾病发生机制和药物筛选及有效性和安全性评价的重要手段。随着分子生物学技术的发展及对疾病分子遗传机制研究的深入,啮齿类动物与人类遗传背景、生理及代谢特征等方面的差异使得啮齿类动物很难体现人类疾病的复杂症状,在生命科学研究中的局限性日益突出。灵长类动物在进化上与人类更为接近,其生物学特性与人类非常相似,在生命科学研究中有着不可替代的作用,但目前灵长类动物遗传操作困难、研究周期长、成本高。树鼩是一种在进化上比啮齿类更为接近灵长类的小型哺乳动物,其神经功能障碍和感染性疾病等多个系统的关键因子和信号通路与人有保守和独特的特征,同时与灵长类动物比较,具有易饲养、繁殖快、研究成本低等优点,目前已越来越多地应用于生物医学研究领域。本文基于树鼩在生理代谢过程和组织解剖结构方面的特点,分析其在生物医学研究中的优势与面临的问题。

Animal model is an important method to study the mechanism of human disease,to screen drug,and to evaluate the safety and efficacy of drugs.With the development of molecular biology technology and the study of molecular genetic mechanism of human diseases,it is difficult to study the complex symptoms of human diseases in biomedical research using rodents as a result of the differences in genetic background,physiological and metabolic characteristics between rodent and human,the limitation of rodent in life science research is increasingly prominent.Primates play an irreplaceable role in biomedical research due to its evolution and biological characteristics.However,the limitation of genetic manipulation,long breeding cycle and high cost restrict the application of primates in biomedical research.The evolution of tree shrews are more closer to the primate than rodents.Tree shrews has been increasingly applied in the field of biomedical research since its characteristics of easy breeding,fast reproduction,the low cost and the key factors of neurological dysfunction and infectious diseases are conservative compared with primates.Based on the characteristics of physiological metabolic process and anatomical structure of tree shrews,this paper analyzes the advantages and problems of tree shrew in biomedical research.