The rabbit model in preclinical hypospadias research: Strengths and limitations

Abstract

The rabbit model is widely used to evaluate routine urethroplasty procedures and also to test new tissue engineering approaches for the treatment of hypospadias. The overall goal is to evaluate long-term structural and functional effects prior to clinical application, but advances in this area must be balanced against the need to replace, reduce, and refine the use of animals in research. To ensure translatability and reproducibility, some of the most critical issues to define when designing preclinical studies of hypospadias are animal age, anatomic location, and injury size. Importantly, future research strategies should consider new methods for assessing functional performance and models that approximate human pathology. (See Video 3.1).