Abstract
Cholangiopathies are an important group of liver diseases affecting the biliary system, and the purpose of this review is to describe how diseases in the biliary system can be studied in mouse models. A particular focus is placed on mouse models for Alagille syndrome, a cholangiopathy with a strong genetic link to dysfunctional Notch signaling. Recently, a number of different genetic mouse models based on various manipulations of the Notch signaling pathway have been generated to study Alagille syndrome, and we discuss the resulting phenotypes, and possible causes for the phenotypic heterogeneity among the various models. In the final section, we provide a more general discussion on how well mouse models can be expected to mimic human liver disease, as well as an outlook toward the need for new technologies that can help us to gain new insights from mouse models for liver disease.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Mattias Karlén for the illustrations to this chapter. Work in the authors’ laboratories is supported by the Swedish Research Council, the Swedish Cancer Foundation and ICMC (Integrated CardioMetabolic Center) (UL) and the Center of Innovative Medicine (CIMED) Grant, the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation (KAW), the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet), Karolinska Institutet, the Daniel Alagille Award, and the Heart and Lung Foundation (ERA). One project in ERA lab is funded by ModeRNA. The funders have no role in the design or interpretation of the work in either laboratory.
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Van Hul, N., Lendahl, U., Andersson, E.R. (2019). Mouse Models for Diseases in the Cholangiocyte Lineage. In: Vinken, M. (eds) Experimental Cholestasis Research. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1981. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-9420-5_14
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