Surprising Science — March 3, 2011

The Research & Development Road

Why are new drugs always tested on laboratory mice, anyway? And when a drug does successfully cure a poor mouse, how does it find its way to human drug stores?

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Blessèd be the mice for being our guinea pigs, so to speak. “The news is full of headlines about some drug that has cured mice of everything from baldness to paralysis. Although these advances are real, their useful medical application for humans seems out of reach. What does it take for drugs to make the jump from animals to human testing? And when does a drug being tested on people finally make it into your pharmacy. The first step for scientists to test their drugs on humans is getting FDA and Department of Health and Human Services approval. Naturally, this means mountains of paperwork…”

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