At Pitt, research involving animals helps us understand disease and discover new treatments to improve human and animal health.
Studying animals gives us a window into understanding how our own bodies work. We then use this knowledge to develop treatments for devastating diseases. Such advances have saved millions of lives and drastically improved the quality of life for millions more.
How Animal Research Helped Advance Liver Transplants
Surgeon Thomas E. Starzl’s early studies helped lay the groundwork for human liver transplantation. After joining the University of Pittsburgh, Starzl and his colleagues advanced the use of medications that help prevent the body from rejecting a transplanted organ. Their work involving animals helped make liver transplantation a treatment option for more people with life-threatening liver disease.
How Animal Research Helped Build Modern Resuscitation
Pitt’s Peter Safar, often called the father of CPR, helped develop modern resuscitation through human and animal research. Animal studies established the effectiveness of chest compressions, which Safar helped combine with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, his Pitt team showed that mild cooling after cardiac arrest could reduce brain injury in animals. These findings helped lay the groundwork for human trials published in 2002 and the adoption of therapeutic hypothermia.
