CURRENT TRENDS IN NEUROSCIENCES
THE EXPERIMENTAL ANIMAL MODELS FOR THE RESEARCH OF NEUROIMMUNOLOGICAL DISEASES
Yayıncı:
İstanbul Üniversitesi Yayınları
Neuroimmunological diseases may have been known for centuries in medical practice, but they are still both challenging and emerging topics even in this modern medicine era, since they are quite heterogeneous and hard to differentiate one particular neuroimmune disease from another neurological ones, which make them hard to diagnose and treat. Experimental animal models have always been a good tool for researching pathogenesis and treatment strategies of these diseases. In the last decades, as the cutting-edge technologies develop, in vivo studies have seen lots of improvements like transgenic models, spontaneous animal models, and also the experimental equipments used in in vivo studies and laboratory animal welfare. However also in vitro assays, like genetic manipulations in cell culture, organ-on-a-chip and advanced biochemical and genetic technologies have been developed and they have being discussed whether these technologies may take place of experimental animal models. Despite of ongoing arguments, animal models for human diseases are still one of the best and widely-used experimental approaches to reveal the pathological mechanisms and develop new treatment strategies in systemic action. In this chapter, we are going to discuss briefly the most common experimental animal models of wellknown neuroimmunological diseases to give the readers the main concept of how to study these diseases in vivo.
