Where are we at regarding species translation? A review of the sbv IMPROVER challenge

Animal models serve an important purpose in fundamental re-search aimed at understanding the molecular networks under-pinning biological and cellular mechanisms. In drug development and toxicological risk assessment, compound test-ing usually starts by in vitro experiments, followed by in vivo testing using rodents as a mammalian model. This practice as-sumes that such animal models respond to active substances through similar mechanisms. Yet in spite of many effective uses of animal models, numerous findings have also been unsuc-cessfully translated to humans, as evidenced by the failure of many clinical trials. These failures clearly stem from our lack of detailed understanding of inter-species differences that pre-cludes na€ıve translation of knowledge derived from animal models directly to human, but also further distinction among available rodent models, including xenograft, genetic or syngen