Research Status and Perspective of Disease Animal Models in China

With the increasing demand of medical research, disease animal models are widely used to study the mechanism of human disease initiation and development, drug screening, and treatment evaluation. The development of different kinds of disease animal models is reviewed. The advantages of China and the gap between China and the world in this field are analyzed. This review covers the fields of cancer, neurological diseases and mental health, infectious and immune diseases, cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, and drug screening. The main future directions in this field are pointed out and the funding related to 'disease animal models' by the National Natural Science Foundation of China is introduced briefly.