ABSTRACT
Animals, and especially mice, have been used as “in vivo test tubes” in scientific experiments for many years for developmental biology, disease modeling, and many other research applications (Hughes et al. 2011). Mice and rats have been used specifically to test the toxicity of new drugs prior to initiation of human clinical drug trials. However, in recent years it has become clear that animal models have significant limitations due to their genetic differences when compared to humans. This is especially critical for assessment of toxic side effects of drugs that might target the liver, heart, and other organs, due to the differences in enzymatic activity between humans and rodents, which results in different processing of drugs.
