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You can use caterpillars as alternative animal models for gut inflammation!!!!!

Very cool! I'm curious how this work started: were you - personally - interested in reducing the use of mammalian models? Were you always interested in insect models or was this project just kind of handed to you?

I'm always curious about scientist's personal connections to their projects (if they have any).

P.S. I work in the microbiome space too, and am super excited about any research that could reduce the number of mice my lab has to use :)

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It’s a work around as they are not vertebrates. However they lack any form of adaptive immunity (T cells and B cells) so they will only provide insight into innate immunity that will only be partially relevant to human disease.

>Very cool! I'm curious how this work started: were you - personally - interested in reducing the use of mammalian models? Were you always interested in insect models or was this project just kind of handed to you?
>
>I'm always curious about scientist's personal connections to their projects (if they have any).
>
>P.S. I work in the microbiome space too, and am super excited about any research that could reduce the number of mice my lab has to use :)

Hi, Thank you for your comment!
Yes, to be honest, it was hard for me to use mice for experiments (Although using small mammals like mice in science is absolutely necessary!). However, I felt like alternatives are under-studied, and not enough attention is paid to this area. So I started with caterpillars, and because I had access to a medical imaging facility, I trayed to image gut inflammation in Manduca sexta caterpillars (as a side project). In the end, it turned out very well, and we showed that scientists could use the larva-based imaging platform for early preclinical hypothesis testing.
Of course, caterpillars will not replace mice. Still, they can be used in the early stages of research, eventually reducing the use of small mammals at the end of translation (at least for gut inflammation and microbiomics).

>It’s a work around as they are not vertebrates. However they lack any form of adaptive immunity (T cells and B cells) so they will only provide insight into innate immunity that will only be partially relevant to human disease.

Yes, that is true! The lack of adaptive immunity is an important limitation of this model. But it turned out that the innate part of immunity is of comparable, if not more significance, for human health than adaptive immunity. So it is a great chance to study the innate part of immunity exclusively. But of course, if you want to study T-cells and B-cells, you can not use insects like Manduca. Thank you for this very constructive and knowledgeable comment!