A Cat who Curates Rare Mice

Mouse models can play an essential role in allowing researchers to understand rare diseases and develop drugs to treat them. Cat Lutz, senior director of mouse repository and in vivo pharmacology genetic resource science at The Jackson Laboratory, researches mice as a model for human neurodegenerative disease. The lab’s mouse repository and Rare and Orphan Disease Center today features more than 12,000 unique strains including more than 1,700 live colonies that are distributed to the scientific community. We spoke to Lutz about the role mouse models play in rare disease research, how new gene editing technologies are changing the development of mouse models, and why new technologies are unlikely to displace their use anytime soon.