A powerful in vivo alternative model in scientific research: Galleria mellonella

Abstract

Murine models are suggested as the gold standard for scientific research, but they have many limitations of ethical and logistical concern. Then, the alternative host models have been developed to use in many aspects especially in invertebrate animals. These models are selected for many areas of research including genetics, physiology, biochemistry, evolution, disease, neurobiology, and behavior. During the past decade, Galleria mellonella has been used for several medical and scientific researches focusing on human pathogens. This model commonly used their larvae stage due to their easy to use, non-essential special tools or special technique, inexpensive, short life span, and no specific ethical requirement. Moreover, their innate immune response close similarly to mammals, which correlate with murine immunity. In this review, not only the current knowledge of characteristics and immune response of G. mellonella, and the practical use of these larvae in medical mycology research have been presented, but also the better understanding of their limitations has been provided.

Galleria mellonella as a Novelty in vivo Model of Host-Pathogen Interaction for Malassezia furfur CBS 1878 and Malassezia pachydermatis CBS 1879

“…This model allows the evaluation of virulence factors, anti-fungal agents and immune response to a pathogen. Compared to other animal models, G. mellonella larvae are easy to handle, cheap, have no ethical limitations, and their innate immune system is similar to that of humans (Fuchs et al, 2010;Pereira et al, 2018;Singkum et al, 2019;Trevijano-Contador and Zaragoza, 2019). Besides, as shown in this study, larvae can be easily roomed at the desired temperature in an incubator, allowing the researchers to have better control of the experimental condition and to get reliable and reproducible data.…”

“…One of the advantages of using G. mellonella larvae as a model of host-pathogen interaction is the versatility of methods of inoculation, which can be topical (Scully and Bidochka, 2005), oral (Freitak et al, 2014) or the most common, microinjection (Eisenman et al, 2014;Amorim-Vaz et al, 2015;Kloezen et al, 2015;Wuensch et al, 2018;Sheehan and Kavanagh, 2019). Some other advantages include the feasibility of handling larvae due to their size, the fact that it is not necessary to feed them since they stop feeding in the fifth instar when experiments start (Singkum et al, 2019), the exclusion of ethical implications like those used in mammalian models, the ease of following-up on the progress of infection due to the use of standardized health scores (Champion et al, 2018), and the good antifungal immune response that includes cellular and humoral components (Kay et al, 2019;Trevijano-Contador and Zaragoza, 2019).…”

In Vitro or In Vivo Models, the Next Frontier for Unraveling Interactions between Malassezia spp. and Hosts. How Much Do We Know?

“…This strategy leads to reducing the use of mammals and the replacement of these with alternative models; like computer, in vitro, alternative vertebrate ( Danio rerio ) [ 100 ], and invertebrate models [ 101 ]. In general, invertebrate alternatives used to model fungal infections like amoeboid models [ 53 , 102 ], Caenorhabditis elegans [ 103 , 104 , 105 ], Drosophila melanogaster [ 63 , 106 , 107 ], Tenebrio molitor [ 108 ], Bombyx mori [ 60 ], and Galleria mellonella [ 65 , 67 , 109 , 110 ] ( Figure 1 and Table 1 ) have gained importance, amongst others, as these present an innate immune response similar to that found in mammals. Furthermore, microbial virulence factors play similar roles in mammals and invertebrate systems [ 53 , 106 , 111 ].…”

In vivotranscriptome analysis provides insights into host-dependent expression of virulence factors byYersinia entomophagaMH96, during infection ofGalleria mellonella

“…Yet, to date, pathogen in vivo transcriptome studies from G. mellonella have been confined to fungal pathogens only, including Candida albicans (Amorim-Vaz et al, 2015) and entomopathogenic Beauveria bassiana (Chen et al, 2018). Since the immune system of G. mellonella consists of both cellular (i.e., hemocytes) and humoral components (Singkum et al, 2019; Wojda, 2017), the intrahemocoelic infection is useful to characterize host-dependent genome-wide transcriptional modulation by MH96 in response to three stages of infection using a time-resolved approach.…”