◼ COVID-19 / VIRUS Bloomberg Businessweek March 16, 202060
new line. “We’re getting our first animals and are
in the process of doing additional breeding,” says
Charles Miller, Jackson’s global logistics chief. “Right
now we are just scaling as fast as we can.”
Pregnant mice need about three weeks to
deliver their pups, and newborns need about six
more weeks to reach maturity so the cycle can start
again. Jackson is taking preorders and hasn’t yet told
would‑be customers when they’ll receive deliveries.
China’s Cyagen Biosciences Inc. says it will have
mice ready next month. GenOway aims to develop a
newer breed that’s better targeted to coronaviruses,
but it says that could take a year or more.
The mouse crisis is one reason talk about the
speedy introduction of a vaccine isn’t realistic.
Without mice to study, scientists simply can’t fully
test potential drugs and vaccines. “It’s a major
bottleneck,” says Nikolai Petrovsky, a profes‑
sor at the medical school of Flinders University in
Adelaide, Australia. He says animal testing is “abso‑
lutely essential” and cautions against political pres‑
sure to speed up the process. “I know some people
are talking about bypassing animals and going to
human studies,” Petrovsky says. “But that’s fraught
with difficulty and danger.”
In the meantime, some in the field are exploring
alternatives. Bowen, the Colorado State researcher,
says he’s trying tests with ferrets, hamsters,
guinea pigs, and rabbits, though they all havePHOTOGRAPH BY TRISTAN SPINSKI FOR BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK▶ When the virus
started spreading, the
Jackson Laboratory
had none of the mice
needed to develop
a vaccine▲ Frozen mice semen
at Jackson