A recent interview has highlighted the emerging value of caterpillars to the study of diseases of the intestines and how this can reduce the use of vertebrate animals in this type of research.

In a Q&A with the German advocacy organisation, Tierversuche verstehen, Dr Anton Windfelder, from the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology IME, in Schmallenberg, explained why the caterpillars of the tobacco hornworm moth (Manduca sexta) make a good model to examine the immunity of the human gut.

Described by Dr Windfelder as ‘a gut on legs’, these caterpillars have intestines that are large enough to be studied non-invasively by using imaging machines – which also means they do not need to be killed in order to examine them, unlike more complex animals, or smaller insects.

Remarkably, they also share 90% of disease-causing genes with people, and have similar immune systems and basic biological mechanisms.

Dr Windfelder’s research ultimately hopes to understand gut diseases that arise from an overactive immune system, such as inflammatory bowel disease, and he added that these caterpillars could also be used to research infectious, metabolic and neurological diseases, and test antibiotics. 

Drugs can also be tested on the living caterpillars, holding the potential to reduce traditional animal testing, usually done in mice (although mammal tests are still required before drugs can progress to clinical trials).