Therapeutic Use of Cytokines: Animal Models

Although many clinical studies of the effects of burn or other major traumatic injury have been carried out and have yielded important information, many questions of mechanism may not be asked in this setting for practical or ethical reasons. Animal models afford the opportunity to study these questions. This has been especially since syngeneic strains are available where all animals are essentially twins. Furthermore, the use of congenic strains allows the choice of animals different at a single genetic locus where, for example, cells may be transferred between animals and recovered later to identify homing or cellular activities in different organs of the body.