Research Highlights

        Next >  
A novel pig model capturing clinical symptoms of harlequin ichthyosis
Kiho Lee*
Department of Animal and Poultry Sciences, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA
*Correspondence to:Kiho Lee, E-mail: kiholee@vt.edu
J Mol Cell Biol, Volume 11, Issue 12, December 2019, 1027-1028,  https://doi.org/10.1093/jmcb/mjz034

The application of proper animal models is essential for developing effective treatments in biomedicine. Due to practicality, rodent models have been dominantly used as a model to identify potential treatments for patients. However, differences in physiology and anatomy between rodents and humans have been an obstacle when translating the data generated from rodents to clinics. Large animal models such as pigs can recapitulate symptoms of human diseases, making pigs an ideal model for preclinical assessment of new treatments (Prather et al., 2013). For instance, symptoms of primary immunodeficiency are more accurately represented in pigs compared to mice (Suzuki et al., 2012), demonstrating their suitability as an animal model in biomedicine. Unfortunately, the number of available pig models is low, in part, because of challenges in establishing pig models through current genetic engineering technology.