In terms of extensive experience in the study of chemically-induced diabetic rodent models, Creative Biolabs is able to provide the most reliable alloxan-induced diabetic model to our clients' demands.
Chemically-Induced Rodent Models
Several methods including chemical, surgical and genetic manipulation are applied in the induction of diabetes mellitus in laboratory animals, which represent a useful tool in the diabetes investigation and new therapeutic target evaluation. However in diabetes research, among the diverse models, chemically-induced are highly preferable by investigators covering alloxan- and streptozotocin-induced rodent models.
Properties of Alloxan
Alloxan is a pyrimidine derivative, which became of interest in diabetes research when it was reported to be diabetogenic. As a cytotoxic glucose analogue, it is structurally similar to glucose with hydrophilicity and instability, which is closely related to its pathogenicity. On one hand, the hydrophilic property stops alloxan from penetrating the plasma membrane. On the other hand, the glucose-like structure allows an entrance of alloxan into β cells. In addition, another important reason for alloxan in the development of diabetes is that the central 5-carbonyl group of alloxan can react with the thiol groups of various enzymes in β cells, especially glucokinase, the well-known and most sensitive thiol enzymes. The instability of alloxan result from the short half-life of it, which will decompose into alloxanic acid spontaneously in aqueous solution within a few minutes and the products are not diabetogenic.
Fig. 1 Renal histopathological observation of alloxan-induced diabetic rat model.1
Differences between Alloxan- and Streptozotocin-Induced Diabetic Models
Being the most prominent chemicals in diabetes research, although alloxan and streptozotocin share identical mechanisms of β-cell selective action, their cytotoxicity is achieved in different pathways. Briefly, the pancreatic β-cell toxicity and the consequent diabetogenicity of alloxan are a result of redox cycling and the generation of toxic ROS, while the selective destruction of pancreatic islet β-cells by streptozotocin is attributed to its alkylating potency. Generally speaking, streptozotocin is preferable to be the agent of choice for reproducible induction of diabetic experimental animals, owing to its chemical properties, especially the greater stability compared to alloxan. On the other side, alloxan is more widely used in the understanding of β-cell death mediated by ROS in both type 1 and type 2 diabetes mellitus because of its ROS mediated β-cell toxicity.
Creative Biolabs provides various assessment options for testing the effectiveness of potential antidiabetic agents, including but not limited to:
Moreover, Creative Biolabs also offers other types of rodent metabolic disease models that you may be interested in:
In addition to the existing well-characterized rodent models described above, Creative Biolabs offers newly developed animal model validation for a specified project to customers worldwide. If you are interested in any of these services, please feel free to contact us for more details.
Reference
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