December 1997 News

Alabama researchers win award for painless saliva test

December 1, 1997

Three researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) have won the prestigious Doerenkamp-Zbinden Foundation Award for their discovery of a non-surgical, non-invasive method to test for the presence of specific genes in transgenic laboratory mice.

Carl Pinkert, PhD, Michael Irwin, PhD, and the late Jeffrey Moffatt, PhD, of UAB's Department of Comparative Medicine, won the award for their creation of a saliva test to detect the presence of specific genes.

"Current procedures used to detect transgenes involve surgical methods, which can cause pain or discomfort in research animals," Pinkert says. "These procedures can now be bypassed altogether by a painless technique that only takes a small sample of saliva, similar to a mouth rinse."

The Doerenkamp-Zbinden Foundation Award is given for techniques, instruments, or drugs that have produced a clear reduction in suffering in research animals.

The UAB group's polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis can replace surgical biopsy as a method for identifying transgenic animals. These are animals that have been genetically engineered to express foreign or novel DNA to study gene regulation and function. Many researchers use transgenic animals to study the genetic bases of human and animal diseases and to design and test possible treatments.

Since each genetically engineered animal must be tested to determine if DNA transfer was successful, Pinkert says surgical biopsies are performed on hundreds of thousands of animals each year. Pinkert and his colleagues developed their PCR analysis in the summer of 1996.

"The biggest advantage in our test is [in] the welfare of the animals," Pinkert says. "This procedure improves conditions for the animals. It's less stressful; it doesn't induce any complications; and it's considerably quicker."

The PCR analysis is as effective as biopsy on older mice, but does require a two-step process to detect transgene incorporation in younger mice, Pinkert says. Efforts are underway to improve the effectiveness of the test in younger mice. Pinkert and colleagues published their findings in the journal Nature Biotechnology in September 1996.