Interviewee: Mario Capeccchi. Mario Capeccchi talks about approaches to making new therapies.

I mean you can either be very straightforward and then for example re-create a particular disease in a mouse, for example we can make a mouse have cystic fibrosis and then study that disease in great detail, much greater detail than you can in humans, in a mouse, and then eventually use the mouse also to develop new therapies. That's a very direct approach. The more indirect approach is to use this technique to learn about the biology of the mouse and thereby then in the future I think will actually be more powerful, because if we understand for example how the brain works then not only will we be able to go after a particular disease, for example schizophrenia, neuro-psychiatric diseases. So once you have an understanding of the process and in great detail, I think you have a much more direct approach to but all actually developing therapies for a variety of diseases as opposed to being a very specific directed way for a particular disease.

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