Diane_hammond's Blog
Protocol for using human subjects
Posted By: Diane_Hammond, McMaster YES I Can Science on Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Gianni, thanks so much for sharing information about your research with us! You stated:
"First of all, my research program uses both human and animal models to try and answer the questions that we generate. Ultimately, my interest is muscle stem cell function in humans, but sometimes we need to start our experiments using animal models before we can move into a human model. The reason we do this is fairly obvious. In order to do muscle stem cell work in humans we need to take muscle biopsies (taking a piece of muscle using a big needle) from willing and generous volunteers who think our research question is worth trying to answer! Before we expose individuals to procedures like muscle biopsies, we like to make sure that the questions we are trying to answer are supported by observations in animals. This way we can ensure that our human participants are not donating precious human tissue for a project that may not go anywhere. At this point, we are in the middle of analyzing tissue from one human project, we have several animal projects in progress, and we have another human project that will begin in the new year."
I'm going to throw my question out to both you and Dr. Hawke. What protocol do you have to follow to move from animal to human trials? Who sets the protocol - the Principal Investigator, the University, a government agency such as NRC? Is it the same protocol for all researchers in different universities?
Diane
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