By reviewing the development from human genome project to precision medicine, we can have a more comprehensive and accurate understanding on comparative medicine, thus provide important enlightenment for more precise and efficient comparative medicine research. Starting from the development from human genome project to precision medicine, this paper summarized and analyzed the development trend of comparative medicine, that is, humanization of laboratory animals and personification of animal models. Moreover, the paper pointed out that under the challenge of big data era, comparative medicine research should play its “cross convergence” characteristics, achieve breakthroughs in research methods and technologies, and improve the efficiency and quality of human health research.

Laboratory animal is one of the important basic scientific research conditions to support the science and technology innovation in the fields of life science and biomedicine. The new and rapid development trend of scientific and technological innovation in China calls for strengthening the strategic position of laboratory animal resources, accurately grasping the creation mode of laboratory animal resources, further improving the policy system and operation mechanism conducive to the creation and development of laboratory animal resources, as well as the service platform for the preservation and sharing of laboratory animal resources, aiming to improve the service level of laboratory animal resources for national scientific and technological innovation.

The development of haploid genetics has motivated studies on genome evolution and function, especially the technological advancements in recent years have prompted the birth of culture techniques for mammalian haploid embryonic stem cells (haESCs). Sperm-like haESCs are novel haESCs derived from mouse parthenogenetic blastocysts. Sperm-like haESCs only contain paternal genetic material, and their sex chromosome is the X chromosome. They can self-renew, differentiate, and proliferate in vitro for a long time. Furthermore, editing single or multiple genes using the CRISPR system is possible for sperm-like haESCs, which can replace sperms to fertilize oocytes. In contrast to traditional methods for constructing mouse models, such as pronuclear injection, cytoplasmic injection, and tetraploid complementation, by injecting sperm-like haESCs after gene editing into oocytes, semi-cloned mice with a definitive genotype can be obtained efficiently and stably without chimerism, and primary mice can be used for research. The mouse disease model based on multiple precisely edited genes obtained from sperm-like haESCs can explain the effect of multiple genes synergistic interaction at the level of biological individuals to completely simulate various pathological characteristics of complex human diseases that may be affected by multiple genes, and this model facilitates the exploration of novel diagnostic and therapeutic methods.

The accreditation for laboratory animal institutions of China National Accreditation Service for Conformity Assessment (CNAS) is a third-party evaluation program that is in line with international practices and China's national conditions, it is complementary to the national laboratory animal license system, and is an important system for the management of laboratory animal institutions. This paper introduces the origin, development, status quo, problems, and challenges of CNAS laboratory animal accreditation, and proposes countermeasures and suggestions for improving the accreditation system of laboratory animal institutions.

Overdose of injectable barbiturates or barbituric acid derivatives is the most preferred euthanasia method for the majority of animal species. However, these controlled drugs have limited access, and in this case or in any other scientific concerns, veterinarians may choose alternative, conditional acceptable methods as recommended by American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) Guidelines for the Euthanasia of Animals. In the newest 2020 Edition, existing euthanasia methods, techniques and agents of euthanasia are updated according to recently released articles. This article summarized the updated content of the new version of the AVMA Guidelines and on this basis, enumerated the most preferred methods of euthanasia, methods acceptable with conditions and unacceptable methods to euthanize different animal species. In addition, principles and precautions related to animal euthanasia were also briefly described.

General anesthetics used for laboratory animals are mostly controlled drugs, and are subject to strict supervision by the competent government agency in China. Many general anesthetics recommended in the literature are either unavailable or difficult to procure/access in the market, resulting in limited options for clinical use. Furthermore, not all laboratory veterinarians have practical experience in species-specific anesthetic selection and use. Owing to these factors, general anesthesia presents a common institutional challenge in animal surgical programs and serves as a bottleneck that restricts the sustainable development of biomedical industries working with laboratory animal species. This article summarizes the pharmacological properties of common general anesthetics and provides suggestions for general anesthesia in different laboratory animal species.

The host digestive tract comprises trillions of commensal microbes, collectively called microbiota. These microbes interact with a various host cell types and have a significant impact on health and disease. High-throughput sequencing technologies have accelerated the identification of numerous poorly studied microbes associated with health and disease. Genetic and humanized mouse models with and without environmental exposure were established to study the roles of these microbes in human physiologies and pathologies. Important findings related to the microbiota, mucosal immunity, and infectious diseases in mouse models are summarized. Furthermore, challenges and opportunities in leveraging genetic approaches and environmental exposure to optimize mouse models are discussed.

Chinese hamsters are experimental animals originally from China. They play an important role in experimental research on medicine and biology. They are widely used in life science research, such as genetics, infectious diseases, tissue culture, especially in animal models and mechanism research, such as diabetes and oral cancer. This paper reviews the relevant applied studies of Chinese hamsters in disease animal models since its development, and discusses the advantages and problems associated with the use of these animals in biomedical research.

Cerebral ischemia is a common clinical cerebrovascular disease, accounting for about 80% of all cerebrovascular diseases, and it is mainly caused by insufficient blood supply to the cerebrovascular system. Multiple animal models have currently been used to study the pathogenesis and treatment of cerebral ischemia. In order to provide a reference for the selection and improvement of animal models for exploration of underlying mechanisms, this review highlights multiple animal models on global and focal cerebral ischemia with diagrams, and discusses their advantages and disadvantages. The choice of animals, behavioral evaluations of rodent sensory-motor activities, and histological evaluation progress for cerebral ischemia models are also outlined.

Effective management of laboratory biosafety plays one of the most important roles in the national biosafety system. Laboratory animals have been widely used in the life science research field, including infection animal experiments, which have to be done in the animal biosafety laboratory (ABSL). The risk assessment and control related to laboratory animals and animal experiments are the most important affairs in ABSL, and the identification and traceability of laboratory animals detected by wireless tracking technology represent a developing tendency in ABSL management. From the perspective of biosafety, this paper summarized the development of laboratory animal identification and traceability technology,and described the application prospect in ABSL management of non-contact identification technology, especially radio frequency identification technology, which can provide reference for relevant practitioners to use the identification and traceability technology of experimental animals for biosafety control.

Animal models are key foundation for the research on the pathogenesis of emerging infectious diseases and the development of targeted vaccines and drugs, which play an irreplaceable role in deepening the scientific understanding of new infectious diseases and developing the effective prevention and control measures. In this paper, three kinds of emerging viral infectious pathogens (coronavirus, flavivirus and influenza virus) which are seriously harmful to human life and health in recent years are reviewed. The construction and application of the corresponding experimental animal models are briefly described, and their pros and cons are compared, so as to provide a reference for selecting the appropriate animal models for the further research on pathogenicity mechanism and the studies on vaccines and drugs against those emerging viruses.

Based on the analysis of the development and formation of the management mechanism of laboratory animals under different systems at home and abroad, the advantages of the management mechanism implemented in China were explained, the existing shortcomings were found out, and the countermeasures and suggestions were put forward to improve and strengthen the management system and mechanism of laboratory animals in China.

Animal model is an important method to study the mechanism of human disease, to screen drug, and to evaluate the safety and efficacy of drugs. With the development of molecular biology technology and the study of molecular genetic mechanism of human diseases, it is difficult to study the complex symptoms of human diseases in biomedical research using rodents as a result of the differences in genetic background, physiological and metabolic characteristics between rodent and human, the limitation of rodent in life science research is increasingly prominent. Primates play an irreplaceable role in biomedical research due to its evolution and biological characteristics. However, the limitation of genetic manipulation, long breeding cycle and high cost restrict the application of primates in biomedical research. The evolution of tree shrews are more closer to the primate than rodents. Tree shrews has been increasingly applied in the field of biomedical research since its characteristics of easy breeding, fast reproduction, the low cost and the key factors of neurological dysfunction and infectious diseases are conservative compared with primates. Based on the characteristics of physiological metabolic process and anatomical structure of tree shrews, this paper analyzes the advantages and problems of tree shrew in biomedical research.

In this paper,we elaborated the importance of specific pathogen-free (SPF) pigs for prevention and control of livestock and poultry disease and the research status at home and abroad,analyzed the existing problems,introduced the common breed methods of SPF pig population,and discussed the application prospect of SPF pigs.The aim of this paper is to provide some theoretical guidance for the development of experimental animals on animal disease prevention and control research.

Traditional biomedical model animal is easy to manage in the experimental facility, which can be quickly and efficiently applied to the basic study of human disease related genes. However, in some cases, they cannot represent the complexity of human physiology. Pig is highly similar to human beings in anatomy and physiology, and widely used in related research on human diseases. In this review, we summarized the present progress of pigs as human infectious disease model, and the characterization of disease infection model.

Worldwide, the number of patients needing organ transplants for end-stage organ failure is growing, howeverŁ¬ the number of organs available from donation after cardiac death/donation after brain death (DCD/DBD) or living donors is very limited. Therefore, the use of pig organs/tissues for xenotransplantation is one of the final solutions for the shortage of organs. Although tremendous progress has been made in xenotransplantation research, there are still some huge hurdlers, especially immune rejection, in the clinical application of xenotransplantation. With the continuous progress of the field, especially the development of various gene editing technologies, knocking out specific porcine genes which cause hyperacute rejection and humanizing multiple genes in pigs become possible, the survival of transplanted organs in the models of non-human primates has been significantly improved. Moreover, the application of CRISPR/Cas9 technology to remove porcine endogenous retroviruses (PERV) from the pig genome eliminates the potential risk of endogenous pathogens infecting the host after xenotransplantation, which is of landmark significance. This work reviews the barriers, progress, safety, oversight and current status of xenotransplantation.

Genetically modified (GM) rabbits have been proved to be excellent animal models for biomedical research. GM rabbits expressing human genes have been widely used as models for cardiovascular disease, AIDS, and cancer research. So far, GM rabbits were almost generated by pronuclear microinjection, which randomly leads to additive genes integrated in the rabbit genome. Compared to this technology, gene targeting in ES cells is more powerful tool for deepening understanding of gene function. However, the rabbit lack stable ES cell lines. Thus, gene targeting, dependent on ES cells, is not possible used in rabbit. Instead, RNA interference is quickly becoming a valuable experimental tool that allows investigators to knock down the expression of specific genes, and makes it possible to create GM rabbit models. Recently, with the advent of novel genetic technologies, such as Zinc-finger nucleases, transcription-activator like effector nuclease, the RNA-guided CRISPR-Cas endonuclease, there have been a significant breakthroughs in gene targeting of rabbit. Researchers have successfully created some gene knock out rabbits using Zinc-finger nucleases, or transcription-activator like effector nuclease, or the RNA-guided CRISPR-Cas endonuclease. Based on our study in the area of GM rabbits, in this paper, we review the progress of GM technology in rabbits during the past years and emphasize their applications as a model in biomedicine.