Mice are the foundation for numerous advances in medicine, including therapies for cancer, heart disease, hypertension, metabolic and hormonal disorders, diabetes, obesity, osteoporosis, glaucoma, skin pigmentation diseases, blindness, deafness, neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, birth defects, and psychiatric disorders including anxiety, depression and schizophrenia.

Rats have long been a valuable model in research to answer many questions about physiology, immunology, pharmacology, toxicology, nutrition, behavior, and learning. They have contributed to medical advances for obesity, diabetes and cancer, as well as those for cardiovascular, neurological, inflammatory and immune mediated diseases.  

Fruit flies have helped to develop drugs designed to treat a range of diseases from skin infections and genetic disorders to pneumonia, and meningitis. Some of the recent research with fruit flies has focused on understanding Alzheimer’s disease, Huntington’s disease, spastic paraplegia, cancer, obesity and insomnia.

The common marmoset is important in studies for safety, reproductive biology, neuroscience, and drug development. Its small size and many similarities with humans, as well as its  differences, make the common marmoset a valued model. In one area of research, multiple sclerosis (MS), an inflammatory disease of the brain caused…