Preclinical Models of Cardiac Disease: A Comprehensive Overview for Clinical Scientists

Abstract

For recent decades, cardiac diseases have been the leading cause of death and morbidity worldwide. Despite significant achievements in their management, profound understanding of disease progression is limited. The lack of biologically relevant and robust preclinical disease models that truly grasp the molecular underpinnings of cardiac disease and its pathophysiology attributes to this stagnation, as well as the insufficiency of platforms that effectively explore novel therapeutic avenues. The area of fundamental and translational cardiac research has therefore gained wide interest of scientists in the clinical field, while the landscape has rapidly evolved towards an elaborate array of research modalities, characterized by diverse and distinctive traits. As a consequence, current literature lacks an intelligible and complete overview aimed at clinical scientists that focuses on selecting the optimal platform for translational research questions. In this review, we present an elaborate overview of current in vitro, ex vivo, in vivo and in silico platforms that model cardiac health and disease, delineating their main benefits and drawbacks, innovative prospects, and foremost fields of application in the scope of clinical research incentives.

Experimental Animal Models in Heart Disease

“…Rats, with their bigger stature than mice, make surgical operations easier, allowing researchers to faithfully recreate human cardiac diseases such as ischemic heart disease and hypertension using techniques such as coronary artery ligation. Their anatomical similarities enable the study of surgical methods and interventional therapies applicable to human patients (8). These studies have helped develop new treatments and test the effectiveness of existing treatments.…”

“…Ovine models (Ovis aries) play an important role in the advancement of cardiac surgery, cardiovascular interventions, medical device testing, hemodynamic studies, pharmacological research, and cardiovascular imaging due to their anatomical and physiological similarities to humans, as well as their manageable size. Less common models, such as non-human primates like macaques and baboons, are widely employed in atherosclerosis research to investigate the effects of dietary changes, innovative pharmacological regimens, and cardiac imaging studies (8).…”

“…As a result, there is an urgent need to change these risk factors and find new therapeutic approaches for HF patients (9). To prevent and control HF caused by heart disease, it is vital to understand the pathophysiological mechanisms underlying these disorders and create innovative therapeutic techniques in response (5,8). Current treatments essentially halt the progression of this illness, highlighting the need for novel preventative and reparative therapy.…”