Select animal models of colitis and their value in predicting clinical efficacy of biological therapies in ulcerative colitis.

: Advancing new therapies from discovery to development usually requires proof-of-concept in animal models to justify the costs of continuing the program. While animal models are useful for understanding the mechanism of action (MOA) of a target, limitations of many published colitis models restrict their value to predict clinical efficacy.: The authors focused their literature search on published studies of chronic animal models used to evaluate the pre-clinical efficacy of therapeutic molecules subsequently evaluated in clinical trials for UC.