Chemokines in animal models of inflammation

There is little doubt that animal modeling of various human diseases, disorders, and toxicology has been a staple of both academia and the pharmaceutical industry for decades. While it may be difficult to argue that experimental models, in particular rodent models, of human disease provide an exact mimic of their human counterpart, these experimental systems do provide a mechanism to generate meaningful data in the absence of human specimens. This is especially true in the case of human inflammatory disease where one is unlikely to gain access to tissue samples during the early initiation of a disease, and in the case of chronic disease where continuous, longitudinal samples are nearly impossible to obtain to assess the maintenance stage of chronic disease. Thus, the strategic use of experimental animal systems will continue to be an important tool in assessing both mechanisms of disease and efficacy of drugs which target these diseases.