Mouse Models in Bone Fracture Healing Research

Abstract

Bone fracture healing is a tightly regulated process involving many cell types, mediators, and signaling pathways and is still not well understood. During decades, bone healing was mainly studied in large animals, including dogs, rabbits, or sheep. In recent years, mice have become increasingly popular as a model organism for fracture healing research. The benefits of mice are the possibility of genetic modification, the availability of clinically relevant disease models, low costs, easy handling, short breeding cycles and fast regeneration. Furthermore, various fracture healing models have been developed, which are adapted to the small skeleton and allow standardized investigations. However, attention has to be paid to species differences between mice and humans and the influence of the background strain, age and gender of the mice. This review focuses on the main advantages and disadvantaged of mice as a model organism for bone fracture healing research and critically discusses the translational aspect.