Animal models and in vivo investigations for drug repurposing in lung cancer

Abstract Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide. The difficulties of early detection and treatment resistance adversely affect prognosis. Major challenges for new drug development include cost, safety, and efficacy. As a result, repurposing existing drugs for new indications offers a more favorable risk–return trade-off than other available drug development strategies. Numerous mouse models for lung cancer have been established, which can primarily be divided into genetically engineered or xenograft mouse models. However, genetically modulated models cannot fully represent the systemic complexity of lung cancer, and xenograft models do not behave identically to human lung tumors in drug repurposing. This chapter reviews the current animal models in lung cancer drug repurposing and assesses the challenges and future directions of this field.