Animal models of kidney inflammation in translational medicine

Publication date: Available online 26 August 2014 Source:Drug Discovery Today: Disease Models Author(s): Alexander Holderied , Hans-Joachim Anders Animal models remain an important experimental tool in translational medicine albeit being often criticized for their poor value to mimic human pathophysiology and to predict treatment efficacy. Translational medicine is a multistep process and choosing animal models follows different criteria at each of these stages. Initially, target expression and function are tested in simple models of kidney injury that may or may not mimic any corresponding human disorder. Inappropriate overinterpretation of results from such studies is common. When promising targets are further studied in more specific disease contexts, it becomes necessary to apply animal models that more closely mimic human disease. In general, animal models of monogenetic disorders meet this requirement at best. Polygenic or multicausal disorders like acute kidney injury, glomerulonephritis, focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, and diabetic nephropathy are already extremely heterogeneous in humans and often share nothing else but a characteristic histopathological lesion. When selecting animal models simply for histopathological lesions the heterogeneity of upstream molecular pathways is ignored resulting in poor predictability for human disease. In this setting, consistent data obtained from multiple disease models involving different upstream disease mechanisms can...
Source: Drug Discovery Today: Disease Models - Category: Drugs & Pharmacology Source Type: research