The respiratory tract

The laboratory mouse has developed into the preferred model system for biomedical lung research. The murine lung has become the focus of basic research, toxicology and drug development. New measurement techniques for physiological parameters, for example lung function measurements, have been developed. Although the mouse is genetically very closely related to humans, lung anatomy and function differ considerably. In addition, there are striking differences in the lung physiology between mice and humans. In spite of these differences, the mouse is now widely used for research on asthma, tumours and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), as well as for toxicological studies. For these models the standard histological, molecular biological and immunological tools that are available for the mouse have been adapted to the lung. In contrast, lung function measurement in the mouse is extremely expensive because of the very small dimensions and the high breathing frequency. In this chapter common pathological lesions of the respiratory tract are described and the state-of-the-art methods of analysing the physiology of the mouse lung and the main applications in biomedical research are explained. The mouse is compared to the human situation and other available models.