Kathryn H. Schmitz Answers: What Can Mouse Studies Offer Human Research?

Kathryn H. Schmitz, PhD, MPH, professor of Public Health Sciences and associate director of Population Sciences at the Penn State Cancer Institute, discusses benefits that can be reaped from running parallel mouse and human studies.

Schmitz ran both a mouse model and human study to test different interventions that may prevent breast cancer recurrence and found that, while both types of trials have limitations, having the two happen side-by-side can address some of of these limitations. For example, in mouse studies, researchers were able to observe the animal all the way up to recurrence.