The Rabbit as a Model for Studying Lung Disease and Stem Cell Therapy

Table 2

Advantages and disadvantages of various animal models for studying lung disease, particularly asthma [8, 9].

Animal	Advantages	Disadvantages
Mouse	IgE is the major anaphylactic antibody	Do not exhibit spontaneous AHR
	Numerous inbred strains	Limited airway musculature
	Numerous immunological reagents	Lung anatomy differences
	Small, relatively inexpensive	Do not easily demonstrate smooth muscle hyperplasia
Guinea pig	The lung is the primary organ of anaphylaxis	IgG1 is the major anaphylactic antibody
	Show early and late phase airway responses	Shortage of inbred strains
	Small, docile animals, inexpensive	Few species-specific reagents
Rabbit	Phylogenetically similar to humans; The lung is the major target organ; IgE is the major anaphylactic antibody; Large enough to study for lung mechanics; Demonstrate both early and late phase airway responses	Neonatal immunisation required for developing late phase airway response; Few species-specific reagents; Few transgenic species available; Gene sequences are not well mapped