title: Utility of insects for studying human pathogens and evaluating new antimicrobial agents.
abstract: Insect models, such as Galleria mellonella and Drosophila melanogaster have significant ethical, logistical, and economic advantages over mammalian models for the studies of infectious diseases. Using these models, various pathogenic microbes have been studied and many novel virulence genes have been identified. Notably, because insects are susceptible to a wide variety of human pathogens and have immune responses similar to those of mammals, they offer the opportunity to understand innate immune responses against human pathogens better. It is important to note that insect pathosystems have also offered a simple strategy to evaluate the efficacy and toxicity of many antimicrobial agents. Overall, insect models provide a rapid, inexpensive, and reliable way as complementary hosts to conventional vertebrate animal models to study pathogenesis and antimicrobial agents.
authors.affiliation: New Drug Research and Development Center, School of Pharmacy, Second Military Medical University, Shanghai, 200433, China, wangyansmmu@126.com.
authors.forename: Yan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: De-Dong
authors.initials: DD
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Yuan-Ying
authors.initials: YY
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.forename: Eleftherios
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Mylonakis
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000890:Anti-Infective Agents; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D004331:Drosophila melanogaster; D006801:Humans; D007313:Insecta; D007915:Lepidoptera; D008322:Mammals; D014774:Virulence
chemical_list: D000890:Anti-Infective Agents