title: Mutant mice: experimental organisms as materialised models in biomedicine.
abstract: Animal models have received particular attention as key examples of material models. In this paper, we argue that the specificities of establishing animal models-acknowledging their status as living beings and as epistemological tools-necessitate a more complex account of animal models as materialised models. This becomes particularly evident in animal-based models of diseases that only occur in humans: in these cases, the representational relation between animal model and human patient needs to be generated and validated. The first part of this paper presents an account of how disease-specific animal models are established by drawing on the example of transgenic mice models for Alzheimer's disease. We will introduce an account of validation that involves a three-fold process including (1) from human being to experimental organism; (2) from experimental organism to animal model; and (3) from animal model to human patient. This process draws upon clinical relevance as much as scientific practices and results in disease-specific, yet incomplete, animal models. The second part of this paper argues that the incompleteness of models can be described in terms of multi-level abstractions. We qualify this notion by pointing to different experimental techniques and targets of modelling, which give rise to a plurality of models for a specific disease.
authors.affiliation: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Institut für Philosophie, Unter den Linden 6, 10099 Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: Lara
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Huber
authors.forename: Lara K
authors.initials: LK
authors.lastname: Keuck
mesh_terms: D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000209:etiology*; D000818:Animals; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D006801:Humans; D051379:Mice; D008822:Mice, Transgenic
keywords: Alzheimer’s disease; Animal model; Materiality; Standardisation; Validation