PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Guilherme S. Ferreira, (PhD Candidate)
AU  - Désirée Veening-Griffioen, (PhD Candidate)
AU  - Wouter Boon, (Assistant Professor)
AU  - Ellen Moors, (Professor)
AU  - Christine Gispen-de Wied, (Scientific Staff)
AU  - Huub Schellekens, (Professor)
AU  - Peter van Meer, (Postdoctoral Researcher Non-Clinical Assessor)
TI  - A standardised framework to identify optimal animal models for efficacy assessment in drug development
AID  - 10.1101/382366
DP  - 2018 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 382366
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/08/01/382366.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/08/01/382366.full
AB  - Introduction Poor translation of efficacy data derived from animal models is a potential contributor to costly and unnecessary attrition in clinical trials.Objectives To develop a tool to assess, validate and compare the clinical translatability of animal models used for the preliminary assessment of efficacy.Design and Results We conducted an exploratory literature search to identify the key aspects to validate animal models. Eight aspects (Epidemiology, Pathophysiology, Genetic, Biochemistry, Aetiology, Histology, Pharmacology and Endpoints) were identified for which questions were drafted to evaluate the different faces of the human disease simulation. Features of the framework include standardised instructions, a weighting and scoring system to compare models as well as contextualising factors regarding model similarity and evidence uncertainty. We included a quality assessment of the internal validity of drug intervention studies included in the Pharmacological validation section for both effective and ineffective drugs in humans. A web-based survey was conducted with experts from different stakeholders to gather input on the framework. Finally, we present a case study of a preliminary validation and comparison of two animal models for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (mdx mouse and GRMD dog) and Diabetes Type 2 (ZDF rat and db/db mouse). We show that there are significant differences between the mdx mouse and the GRMD dog, the latter mimicking the human condition to a greater extent than the mouse despite the considerable lack of published data. In DT2, both the ZDF rat and the db/db mouse are comparable with minor differences in pathophysiology.Conclusions FIMD facilitates drug development by serving as the basis to select the most relevant model that can provide meaningful and translatable results to progress drug candidates to the clinic.