Small Animal Models

Cloutier M, Fleury A, Courtemanche J, Ducharme L, Mason JI, et al. 1997. Characterization of the adrenal cytochrome P450C17 in the hamster, a small animal model for the study of adrenal dehydroepiandrosterone biosynthesis. DNA Cell Biol 16 357-368. 

Herschman EIR. Micro-PET imaging and small animal models of disease. Curr Opin Immunol 2003 15 378-84. 

Raman spectroscopy has been successfully used to detect nanomolar concentrations of biologically relevant molecules, to distinguish between structurally similar peptides (e.g. aEp3 and a5pi integrins [22]) and also to detect peptide S-nitrosylation and phosphorylation [23, 24]. Raman spectroscopy has been used to determine the functionalisation of carbon nanotubes and other particles with bioactive peptides (e.g. RGD), whereby their biofunctionalisation has enabled their accumulation at specific sites (e.g. tumours) within small animal models [25]. Furthermore, the in vivo distribution and... 

The limitations of the primate or cat models of human HIV-1 CNS infection include the costs, special facility requirements, the necessity of using mixtures of viral strains (in order to develop reproducible CNS infection), and the relatively small numbers of animals studied that preclude meaningful statistical analyses. These obstacles have urged researchers to develop small animal models. Several rodent models were established including transgenic mice (expressing viral proteins or relevant inflammatory factors seen in HAD), mice infected primarily with murine retroviruses, or severe combined immunodeficient (SCID) mice inoculated intracerebrally with human HIV-1 infected macrophages and reconstituted with human peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBL). 

Suga T, Kameyama T, BGiioshita T, Shimotohno K, Matsumura M, Tanaka H, Kusliida S, Ami Y, Uchida M, Ucliida K, et al. (1991) Infecdon of rats widi HTLV-1 A small-animal model for HTLV-1 cairiers. hit J Cancer 49 764—769. 

The latency associated transcript (LAT) is abundantly transcribed in latendy infected neurons (reviewed in Jones, 1998, 2003). Mice, rabbits, or humans latently infected with HSV-1 express LAT. In productively infected cells or latently infected rabbits, an 8.3-Kb transcript is expressed that has the same sense as LAT. Splicing of the 8.3-Kb transcript yields an abundant 2-Kb LAT and an unstable 6.3-Kb LAT. The majority of LAT is not capped, is poly A-, appears to be circular, and is designated as a stable intron. In small animal models, LAT is important but not required for the latency-reactivation cycle (reviewed in Tones, 1998, 2003). The first 1.5 Kb of LAT coding sequences are important for reactivation from latency. It is not clear vriether LAT encodes a protein or is a regulatory RNA. 

R563 R. Tian and J. S. Ingwall, The Molecular Energetics of the Failing Heart from Animal Models - Small Animal Models , Heart Failure Rev., 1999, 4, 245... 

Heart. - The applications of specific dynamic NMR methods to studies of myocardial pathophysiology have been reviewed. A review has been produced with 36 references on the alterations in myocardial energetics observed in failing hearts of small animal models using NMR in combination with chemical assays. 

The possibility of inducing brain tumors in a small animal model opens the route to excihng studies for the applicahon and optimization of acquisition techniques and data analysis algorithms for vibrational spectroscopic images. 

Both rats and mice are widely used small animal model systems in the life sciences in general and in developmental biology in particular. Moreover, their relatively small size makes them amenable to study with the narrow bore high field instrumentation typically used in MRM. The ability to alter the genetics of the mouse to produce models of human disease is a boon to the study of these phenomena, but a costly undertaking. MRM is well suited to characterizing anatomical differences between... 

There are several models of cardiac hypertrophy, heart disease and heart failure in small animals, particularly the rat. Proteomic analysis of these models has focussed on changes in cardiac proteins in response to alcohol (Patel et al., 1997 Patel et al., 2000) and lead (Toraason et al., 1997) toxicity. Unfortunately the cardiac physiology of small animal models and their normal pattern of gene expression (e.g. isoforms of the major cardiac contractile proteins) differ from that in larger mammals such as humans. Therefore investigations have moved into higher mammals and recently two... 

For many years, small animal models have been utihzed for modeling CPR in humans. Small animals, such as cats, pigs, and dogs, weighing from 5 to 20 kg have been used. Regrettably, smaU-animal experiments are dissimilar to the (elderly) human, but may be carefully appHed for neonatal or small pediatric models. More recently, swine, weighing at least 20 kg have become the standard for experiments. This is not only due to improved similarity between the position of the heart and availabihty of the model, but is mostly due to improved estimation of the cardiac to thoracic cavity size ratio, and the similar ventrodorsal and lateral ratios to humans. 

In general, the morphological and optical features of UCN make them best suited for continuous live imaging of tissues in small animal models, which can then be... 

If the results of the in vitro tests are satisfactory, then in vivo tests in small animal models such as mice, rats, guinea pigs or rabbits are performed at different durations with a statistically significant number of animals, including controls. If these results are satisfactory, then the device is tested in large animal models relevant to the application, such as pigs or sheep. Finally, the device is tested in clinical trials. Different procedures for all these tests have been described and normalised. 

In life sciences research a huge variety of (high dimensional) images is generated, with many new types of microscopy (confocal, two-photon, cryogenic transmission electron microscopy, etc.) and dedicated (bio-) medical small animal scanners (micro-CT, mini PET, mouse-MRl, etc.). The research on molecular imaging and molecular medicine is still primarily done in small animal models. 

High-specific activity radiotracers, produced by neutron activation, have been used with great success to study biochemical processes in the small animal model. For example, Se, having a specific activity of 1,000 Cig has been used to advance the discovery of dependent enzymes and other biologically important proteins. Trace-element and mineral nutrition are important aspects of human and animal health. NAA has been used to characterize a wide variety of samples for their elemental content. The basic nutritional requirement at the cellular level can be studied using NAA and radiotracer techniques. NAA is one of the important methods that has been used to study nutritional bio-availability and absorption of essential trace elements in the human using enriched stable isotopes. 

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