Development and Verification of an Improved Method for Establishing a Pulmonary Fibrosis Mouse Model

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a severe lung disease with multiple underlying causes, and effective treatments are unavailable due to its complicated pathogenesis. Animal models are commonly used to explore the pathogenesis of IPF and to develop new drugs. However, due to the most widely used method of intratracheal administration, via tracheotomy and tracheal instillation, lead to asphyxia and high mortality of mice during the modeling process, a more appropriate IPF animal model to better understand IPF is a dire clinical need. Therefore, this study aimed to improve the endotracheal intubation procedure and validate the model. The improved tracheal intubation method proposed in this study is straightforward and easy to implement, and the animal model was accepted with the hallmark characteristics of IPF. Therefore, if adopted, this methodology can potentially better understanding of the pathogenesis of IPF and facilitates the development of pharmacological agents to overcome IPF.