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One hindrance to creating a viable Parkinson’s pig model for research is the extremely low success rate of producing full-term animals through nuclear transfer. Only 1 to 3 percent of the zygotes produced with the technique develops to full term and becomes a viable animal. Purdue’s animal sciences researchers want to improve the odds by discovering how egg quality and manipulation affect nuclear transfer and fertility.
“Pigs would be an excellent model because they are much closer to human makeup than are mice; a pig embryo is roughly the same size as a human embryo,” Cabot says. “But, if we want to use the pig as a model for specific types of human disease, to test different production characteristics or to produce pigs with resistance to disease, we need to understand what affects the survival and development of the egg.”
What eggs need
Putting the pig eggs and cells through nuclear transfer or in-vitro fertilization will help explain how those manipulations allow or hinder embryo development. It also will reveal what eggs and embryos need to grow both in a natural pregnancy and in a laboratory dish. Human in-vitro fertilization success rates could benefit from animal research, Krisher says.
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| These rare Ossabaw pigs, which have the same metabolic and cardiovascular abnormalities due to their diet as humans, help Rebecca Krisher and other Purdue researchers understand diabetes, heart disease, infertility and other adult-onset diseases. Photo Caption: Tom Campbell |
Seeing how the egg and zygote develop means finding ways to improve reproduction in livestock, humans and endangered animals, she says. She already has demonstrated with laboratory animals that biochemical processes in oocytes affect establishment of pregnancy, embryonic survival, fetal development and adult onset disease. “If we can produce better embryos by improving egg quality, then we may be able to create models to study diseases like Parkinson’s and infertility so we can find better treatments and cures,” Krisher says.
That would mean a lot to people suffering from neurodegenerative disorders, like Hinkle. Although she participates in a boxing class and water aerobics and tackles such ad-ventures as a week at Disney World with her two grown children and their families, she admits that the disease has slowed her down.
Helping patients
Currently, Hinkle takes a cocktail of medicines. When she gets tired she goes into the “shuffle mode,” a common complaint of Parkinson’s sufferers. She doesn’t work anymore and doesn’t drive much, except to her exercise classes and grocery shopping. A friend and fellow Parkinson’s patient wants her to go to Europe for 12 days. “In the past, I would have just gone, but I’m not sure about that type of trip now,” Hinkle says. “Sometimes, when I’m shopping with family or friends, I get tired and just say, ‘Park me here.’”
At age 60, a very upbeat Hinkle is handling the disease and its effects quite well. For that, she says, her doctor, Joanne Wojcieszek, deserves much of the credit.
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