Large Animal Models to Translate Rodent Findings into Clinical Veterinary Practice

Dear Colleagues,

Recent advances in tissue engineering are impressive; however, the implementation into clinical practice is hampered. Translation from rodent models to human patients is sometimes “a bridge too far”. The enormous potential of large animals, with clinical human-like features, such as pigs, horses, sheep, dogs, and cats, has not been fully exploited to advance tissue engineering. Preclinical research, especially, which is intended to investigate the feasibility and long-term effects of engineered material in vivo, can greatly benefit from useful large animal models. Horses, sheep, and dogs, for instance, are useful for orthopaedic research, whereas research in pigs and cats has been instrumental for internal medicine. Furthermore, the deleterious effects of inbreeding can be exploited for genetic research, providing naturally occurring disease models.

Animal testing is under great contemporary societal pressure; thus, fundamental findings in rodents have not easily been translated into clinical practice. It is therefore of the utmost importance to carefully design preclinical studies on the best predictive animal model available for that specific research question. As such, the implementation of clinical cases occurring in veterinary medicine as preclinical models can be instrumental to advance the prospects of mutually beneficial tissue engineering for both humans and animals.

Dr. L.C. Louis Penning
Dr. Francesco Xavier Donadeu
Guest Editors

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• translational medicine
• pre-clinical models
• pets as model and target animals