Animal models of psoriasis—highlights and drawbacks

Research into the pathophysiology of psoriasis remains challenging, because this disease does not occur naturally in laboratory animals. However, specific aspects of its complex immune-pathology can be illuminated through transgenic, knockout, xenotransplantation, immunological reconstitution, drug-...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of allergy and clinical immunology 2021-02, Vol.147 (2), p.439-455
Main Authors: Schön, Michael P., Manzke, Veit, Erpenbeck, Luise
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
adoptive transfer
animal model
chronic inflammation
dermatology
drug testing
epidermis
hyperproliferation
imiquimod
preclinical
preclinical therapeutic study
Psoriasis
skin immunity
skin inflammation
transgenic
xenotransplantation
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Summary:Research into the pathophysiology of psoriasis remains challenging, because this disease does not occur naturally in laboratory animals. However, specific aspects of its complex immune-pathology can be illuminated through transgenic, knockout, xenotransplantation, immunological reconstitution, drug-induced, or spontaneous mutation models in rodents. Although some of these approaches have already been pursued for more than 5 decades and even more models have been described in recent times, they have surprisingly not yet been systematically validated. As a consequence, researchers regularly examine specific aspects that only partially reflect the complex overall picture of the human disease. Nonetheless, animal models are of great utility to investigate inflammatory mediators, the communication between cells of the innate and the adaptive immune systems, the role of resident cells as well as new therapies. Of note, various manipulations in experimental animals resulted in rather similar phenotypes. These were called “psoriasiform”, “psoriasis-like” or even “psoriasis” usually on the basis of some similarities with the human disorder. Xenotransplantation of human skin onto immunocompromised animals can overcome this limitation only in part. In this review, we elucidate approaches for the generation of animal models of psoriasis and assess their strengths and limitations with a certain focus on more recently developed models.
ISSN:0091-6749
1097-6825
DOI:10.1016/j.jaci.2020.04.034