Monique Lorson is an associate research professor of veterinary pathobiology. Her current focus is to develop a swine model of spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) for evaluating novel therapeutics. Large animal models are especially important because often cell-based models and rodents do not accurately reflect the complete human condition, not to mention the logistics involved in “scaling up” from a rodent to a human. Pigs are more similar to humans in size, physiology, metabolism, cardiac output, immune response and the nervous system. Lorson is generating two pig SMA models for evaluating treatments and will soon begin therapeutic studies. For this project, Lorson has developed a collaborative research team spanning multiple colleges and departments at MU. The goal is to provide investigators with a“tool” to systematically evaluate delivery parameters and effectiveness of new treatments, within the context of a single animal model, for a more efficient and successful bench-to-bedside translation.