The Tiny Heroes That Could Save Deer and Elk from Chronic Wasting Disease

It’s not difficult to picture a lush forest landscape populated with majestic deer and elk, long admired for their prowess and strength. Now, imagine that same scene, but instead of healthy and happy animals browsing a forest ecosystem, we see creatures that are thin and disoriented, that struggle to run or even stand, with halting and confused movements that are pitiable and distressing to watch. This is the harsh reality of Chronic Wasting Disease, an illness that currently has no cure and that threatens such wildlife around the world. Part of the challenge with Chronic Wasting Disease is the difficulty in studying it reliably in wildlife. The disease has subtle signs at an early stage, and it is difficult to obtain robust and reproducible data from large, wild animals who often live in remote and poorly accessible forest ecosystems. Consequently, researchers have turned to an unlikely but powerful ally, the tiny laboratory mouse, to model and study the disease under laboratory conditions. Dr. Andrea Grindeland of the McLaughlin Research Institute, and her colleagues, have authored a review of the existing mouse models of Chronic Wasting Disease. These tiny creatures have been engineered to mimic the biology of cervids, such as deer and elk, and are providing crucial insights into how Chronic Wasting Disease evolves, is transmitted, and how it might one day be controlled or even eradicated.