Non-mammalian Animal Models Offer New Perspectives on the Treatment of TBI

Abstract

Patients who have sustained a traumatic brain injury (TBI) exhibit clinical symptoms of widely varying types and severities. In contrast, because of cost, experimental flexibility, and animal welfare, preclinical rodent models of TBI are designed to exhibit relatively homogeneous symptoms. This disconnect may explain why drugs developed using rodent models have universally failed in clinical studies. We suggest that drug development for TBI could benefit from preclinical studies using non-mammalian animals, where cost, experimental flexibility, and animal welfare are less of an issue and variables that affect clinical symptoms, including genotype, age, and environmental factors, can be more extensively investigated.