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Ant microbial symbionts are a new model for drug discovery
Publication date: Available online 18 September 2019Source: Drug Discovery Today: Disease ModelsAuthor(s): Allan Artavia-León, Miguel Pacheco-Leiva, Cristofer Moya-Román, Natalia Rodríguez-Hernández, Adrián A. Pinto-TomásAnts have been widely studied, with 14,000 described species, but it is not until recently that they gained attention as sources for antimicrobial drug discovery. An increasing amount of studies are investigating ant-microbe symbioses, and clear benefits from their microbial counterparts have been experimentally demonstrated for ants in the tribes Attini, Camponotini and Cephalotini. The eusocial lif...
Source: Drug Discovery Today: Disease Models - September 18, 2019 Category: Drugs & Pharmacology Source Type: research

Using gnotobiotic mice to discover and validate therapeutically active microbiota to maintain mucosal homeostasis and treat intestinal inflammation
Publication date: Available online 16 September 2019Source: Drug Discovery Today: Disease ModelsAuthor(s): R. Balfour SartorStudies in gnotobiotic mice have dramatically expanded our understanding of the functional importance of microbiota in the pathogenesis of chronic intestinal inflammation. This brief review describes several strategies by which gnotobiotic mice models can be used to efficiently discover and validate protective components from the resident microbiota for potential therapeutic applications. We provide highly targeted examples of studies that use each of the various strategies to illustrate effective app...
Source: Drug Discovery Today: Disease Models - September 17, 2019 Category: Drugs & Pharmacology Source Type: research

Honey bee as a model organism to study gut microbiota and diseases
Publication date: Available online 14 September 2019Source: Drug Discovery Today: Disease ModelsAuthor(s): Xiaofei Wang, Xue Zhang, Zijing Zhang, Haoyu Lang, Hao ZhengHoney bee is used to model behavior, brain function, and life history transitions, and the physiology, genetics evolution, social behaviors have been intensively studied in this model organism. Recently, it shows that honeybees offer a particularly good opportunity to study the interactions between host biology and gut microbiota that are limited in complexity. All core members of the community are exclusive to this gut system, which are important to the host...
Source: Drug Discovery Today: Disease Models - September 14, 2019 Category: Drugs & Pharmacology Source Type: research

Use and limitations of noninvasive and invasive methods for studying pulmonary function
Publication date: Available online 11 September 2019Source: Drug Discovery Today: Disease ModelsAuthor(s): Juciane Maria de Andrade Castro, Momtchilo RussoThis mini-review aims to critically discuss the advantages and disadvantages of invasive versus noninvasive methods used to access pulmonary function especially in mice models of lung diseases. We briefly discussed the differences between both methods in handling expertise, number of mice required, length of time to determine lung function and anesthetic and/or use of muscle relaxant. Since noninvasive method received more criticisms than invasive method, we discussed cr...
Source: Drug Discovery Today: Disease Models - September 12, 2019 Category: Drugs & Pharmacology Source Type: research

Tunicates: A model organism to investigate the effects of associated-microbiota on the production of pharmaceuticals
Publication date: Available online 12 September 2019Source: Drug Discovery Today: Disease ModelsAuthor(s): Anelize Bauermeister, Paola Cristina Branco, Luciana Costa Furtado, Paula Christine Jimenez, Leticia Veras Costa-Lotufo, Tito Monteiro da Cruz LotufoAscidians are marine invertebrates closely related to vertebrates. These animals have been studied to address complex processes, including evolution of the immune system and developmental biology. As holobionts, housing millions of bacteria in a close relationship that drives adaptive fitness to environmental conditions, ascidians are successful invaders and dominant comp...
Source: Drug Discovery Today: Disease Models - September 12, 2019 Category: Drugs & Pharmacology Source Type: research

C. elegans and its bacterial diet: An interspecies model to explore the effects of microbiota on drug response
Publication date: Available online 5 September 2019Source: Drug Discovery Today: Disease ModelsAuthor(s): Cédric Diot, Aurian P. Garcia-Gonzalez, Albertha J.M. WalhoutOur body is inhabited by a large community of microorganisms referred to as our microbiota that influences almost all aspects of human physiology, including the response to thereapeutic drugs. Drugs can affect microbiota composition and the microbiota can modulate the drug response in the host. A major challenge is to determine which bacteria affect the response to which drugs, and to elucidate the mechanisms involved. Here, we discuss the emergence of the n...
Source: Drug Discovery Today: Disease Models - September 5, 2019 Category: Drugs & Pharmacology Source Type: research

Interactions between human microbiome, diet, enteric viruses and immune system: Novel insights from gnotobiotic pig research
Publication date: Available online 31 August 2019Source: Drug Discovery Today: Disease ModelsAuthor(s): Anastasia N. Vlasova, Gireesh Rajashekara, Linda J. SaifStudies over the past few decades demonstrated that gnotobiotic (Gn) pigs provide an unprecedented translational model to study human intestinal health and diseases. Due to the high degree of anatomical, physiological, metabolic, immunological, and developmental similarity, the domestic pig closely mimics the human intestinal microenvironment. Also, Gn piglets can be efficiently transplanted with human microbiota from infants, children and adults with resultant micr...
Source: Drug Discovery Today: Disease Models - September 1, 2019 Category: Drugs & Pharmacology Source Type: research

Without a bug’s life: Germ-free rodents to interrogate microbiota-gut-neuroimmune interactions
Publication date: Available online 30 August 2019Source: Drug Discovery Today: Disease ModelsAuthor(s): Simon Spichak, Katherine E. Guzzetta, Olivia F. O’Leary, Gerard Clarke, Timothy G. Dinan, John F. CryanThe human body harbors trillions of commensal microbes which play a crucial role in host development of the immune system, gastrointestinal tract, and brain. An alteration in the composition or function of these microbes has been implicated in numerous neurological, neuropsychological, and gastrointestinal diseases. The germ-free rodent model, devoid of all microbes, has been increasingly used to uncover the microbial...
Source: Drug Discovery Today: Disease Models - August 31, 2019 Category: Drugs & Pharmacology Source Type: research

Using the natural variation of mouse populations to understand host-gut microbiome interactions
Publication date: Available online 29 August 2019Source: Drug Discovery Today: Disease ModelsAuthor(s): Elin Org, Aldons J. LusisOne approach to understanding gut microbiome–host interactions, described in this review, is to examine how natural variation in a model organism, where environmental factors can be controlled, affects the microbiome and, in turn, how the microbiome is associated with physiological or clinical traits. A variation of this approach, termed “systems genetics” is to characterize both the microbiome and the host using various high throughput technologies, such as metabolomics or gene expression ...
Source: Drug Discovery Today: Disease Models - August 30, 2019 Category: Drugs & Pharmacology Source Type: research

Gut microbes as a therapeutic armory
Publication date: Available online 29 August 2019Source: Drug Discovery Today: Disease ModelsAuthor(s): Neerupma Bhardwaj, Naama Geva-ZatorskyGut microbes have recently been appreciated to be a possible source of future therapeutics. They have been shown to be associated with a variety of diseases from diverse etiologies. The microbiome can change during the progression of some diseases, and in some cases is linked with disease severity. Following these findings, fecal transplantation has been integrated into treating Clostridium difficile infections with high success rates. These results have become a driving force for st...
Source: Drug Discovery Today: Disease Models - August 30, 2019 Category: Drugs & Pharmacology Source Type: research

Model systems for the study of how symbiotic associations between animals and extracellular bacterial partners are established and maintained
Publication date: Available online 29 August 2019Source: Drug Discovery Today: Disease ModelsAuthor(s): Eric J. Koch, Margaret McFall-NgaiThis contribution describes the current state of experimental model development and use as a strategy for gaining insight into the form and function of certain types of host-microbe associations. Development of quality models for the study of symbiotic systems will be critical not only to facilitate an understanding of mechanisms underlying symbiosis, but also for providing insights into how drug development can promote healthy animal–microbe interactions as well as the treatment of pa...
Source: Drug Discovery Today: Disease Models - August 30, 2019 Category: Drugs & Pharmacology Source Type: research

Drosophila and its gut microbes: A model for drug-microbiome interactions
Publication date: Available online 24 August 2019Source: Drug Discovery Today: Disease ModelsAuthor(s): Angela E. DouglasDrosophila is an excellent system to investigate how the presence and composition of the gut microbiome influences the efficacy of therapeutic drugs and downstream consequences for host health. These opportunities derive from two key attributes of Drosophila. First, Drosophila is amenable for microbiome research, with simple, standardized methods to produce large numbers of microbiologically-sterile flies and flies with a standardized gut microbiome, thereby facilitating experimental reproducibility. Sec...
Source: Drug Discovery Today: Disease Models - August 25, 2019 Category: Drugs & Pharmacology Source Type: research

Editorial: Models for Aging Research
Publication date: Spring 2018Source: Drug Discovery Today: Disease Models, Volume 27Author(s): Hildegard Mack (Source: Drug Discovery Today: Disease Models)
Source: Drug Discovery Today: Disease Models - May 31, 2019 Category: Drugs & Pharmacology Source Type: research

Computational approaches for the systematic analysis of aging-associated molecular alterations
Publication date: Available online 28 April 2019Source: Drug Discovery Today: Disease ModelsAuthor(s): Cédric Debès, Ana Carolina Leote, Andreas BeyerAdvanced computational approaches are needed to interpret the data generated by high-throughput molecular profiling methods. This necessity is particularly pressing in the field of aging research because (i) it is challenging to separate causes and consequences of aging, (ii) samples are often very precious, thus reducing the number of biological replicates, and (iii) heterogeneity between replicates can be particularly high at old age. Here, we describe computational appro...
Source: Drug Discovery Today: Disease Models - April 28, 2019 Category: Drugs & Pharmacology Source Type: research

Extracellular matrix components remodeling and lung function parameters in experimental emphysema and allergic asthma: Differences among the mouse strains
Publication date: Available online 20 April 2019Source: Drug Discovery Today: Disease ModelsAuthor(s): Milena Vasconcellos Oliveira, Pedro Leme Silva, Patricia Rieken Macedo RoccoMice are frequently used in experimental models of respiratory diseases due to their ease of manipulation, genetic homogeneity within inbred populations, and possibility of standardizing environmental exposures. However, it is well established that genetic strain variations in mice may exist, which imply changes in extracellular matrix (ECM) composition and degree of ECM remodeling, with potential for major impacts on respiratory mechanics. The lu...
Source: Drug Discovery Today: Disease Models - April 20, 2019 Category: Drugs & Pharmacology Source Type: research