Insights into chronic renal disease: lessons from animal models

Animal models of acute kidney injury (AKI) and chronic kidney disease (CKD) are essential experimental tools that are utilized to investigate novel mechanistic pathways and validate potential new therapeutic approaches before doing preclinical testing on people. Mouse CKD models have been utilized extensively for these aims over the past several years. Some alternative mouse models are available. These models can be utilized to verify new mechanistic paradigms or novel therapeutics. Additionally, they enable us to focus on research concerning certain cell types affected by kidney injury. In this chapter, several genetic and experimentally produced models that offer researchers the chance to understand renal pathophysiology in addition to quantitative measurements of the severity of fibrosis are discussed.