DUBLIN – The witty Twitter account @justsaysinmice, run by Northeastern University research scientist Jim Heathers, offers a very useful corrective to the misleading and unwarranted hype that often accompanies preclinical studies in mice. What looks good in murine models is all too often lost in translation, for a whole host of reasons, and never has any useful effect in patients. That’s not a concern for a group led by Thomas Thum, of the Institute of Molecular and Translational Therapeutic Strategies at Hannover Medical School in Germany, who just published in Nature Communications the outcome of what is probably the largest ever pig study in heart failure.