Animal Studies

Animal studies find use, in the timeline of drug development, for showing that the drug works for treating the disease. Also, animal studies find use, in the timeline of drug development, for showing toxic effects of the drug being studied, where these toxic effects are used for predicting toxic effects in humans. This chapter reveals that care must be used in choosing the animal that can be best used for showing efficacy for the study drug and also that care must be used for choosing the animal that can be best used for showing a drug’s toxicity that corresponds to toxicity in humans. One example of this is the idea of using rats as an animal model for studying gall bladder infections. Rats would be an inappropriate model for studying gall bladder infections because rats do not have any gall bladder.