Customized Rodent Models of Dry Eye

Inquiry

Dry eye disease (DED), also known as keratoconjunctivitis sicca (KCS), is a multifactorial disease of the ocular surface. Appropriate animal models play a crucial role in investigating dry eye pathophysiology and developing effective treatments. As the world's leading supplier of eye disease models, Ace Therapeutics has created a variety of proven dry eye rodent models to help customers around the world better decipher dry eye pathogenesis or develop new treatments.

Rodent Models of Dry Eye

What Is Dry Eye?

Dry eye syndrome is an autoimmune eye disease with decreased membrane stability, increased tear osmolarity, and ocular surface inflammation caused by multiple factors. It affects millions of people worldwide. Animal models of dry eye can be divided into insufficient tear secretion type, excessive tear evaporation type and mixed type. In order to facilitate the research and development of novel treatments and devices, the development of highly stable, highly reproducible animal models of dry eye can help simulate different dry eye pathogenesis. However, no animal model accurately reproduces all dry eye signs and symptoms in humans. Therefore, accurately identifying the characteristics of each animal model is a key link in dry eye drug development.

Fig. 1. Principles for animal dry eye modeling. (Zhu J, et al., 2022)

Service Overview

With years of experience in ophthalmic drug development using rodent models, Ace Therapeutics has developed several rodent dry eye models to mimic human eye disease. In addition, to meet the research and development needs of scientific researchers around the world, our talented scientists can also customize research according to your needs. Throughout the model development process, we always adhere to high standards for design and development, and ensure model reliability through all-around evaluation.

Explore Ace Therapeutics' Rodent Models of DED

At Ace Therapeutics, two preclinical rodent glaucoma models were developed to mimic dry eye in the human eye and evaluate drug candidates' efficacy, including a scopolamine-induced glaucoma model and a topical benzalkonium chloride-induced glaucoma model. They represent evaporative dry eye and aqueous depletion dry eye, respectively.

Scopolamine-induced DED model

Ace Therapeutics researchers induce a dry eye model in mice/mice by transdermally administering scopolamine.

DED model induced by topical benzalkonium chloride

Ace Therapeutics researchers model DED by topically applying 0.2% BAC twice daily for 7 days.

The dryness of the ocular surface is thought to be one of the precipitating factors of DED. In addition to the above-mentioned models, Ace Therapeutics has also developed an environmental stress-induced dry eye model. This is, rats/mice are placed in constant low-humidity airflow to generate environmental drying stress, simulating human chronic DED.

To ensure the reliability of the model development, after stopping the induction, our researchers judged whether the symptoms of dry eye syndrome persisted by measuring the tear volume, corneal slit lamp imaging, histological examination of the cornea, lacrimal gland, and hastelloy gland, etc., thereby ensuring that these dry eye models can be used to evaluate dry eye treatments. Our researchers are proud that these dry eye models mimic human dry eye very well and are used in dry eye proof-of-concept studies and candidate testing.

Thanks to the in-depth understanding of the pathogenesis of DED, Ace Therapeutics has created a variety of proven dry-eye rodent models for customers around the world. If you are interested in our services or need more detailed information, please feel free to contact us. Our experienced scientists are ready to help you!

References

Zhu J, Inomata T, Shih KC, et al. Application of Animal Models in Interpreting Dry Eye Disease. Front Med (Lausanne). 2022 Feb 1;9:830592.
Huang W, Tourmouzis K, Perry H, et al. Animal models of dry eye disease: Useful, varied and evolving (Review). Exp Ther Med. 2021 Dec;22(6):1394.

For Research Use Only.

Get in Touch