Table 2.

Main characteristics of different ex vivo and in vivo models (information adapted and extended from Calvo et al. [157]).

	C. elegans	Cell Cultures	Yeasts	Drosophila melanogaster	Zebra Fish (Danio rerio)	Murine Models
Handling and maintenance	Easy	Easy	Easy	Fair	Fair	Difficult
Consideration of bioavailability issues	Yes	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Throughput	High	High	High	Moderate	Good	Low
Availability of disease models	Good	Good	Limited	Good	Limited	High
Human prediction capacity	Moderate	Poor	Poor	Poor	Moderate	Good
Ease for genetic manipulation	Good	Good	Good	Good	Limited	Poor
Ethical concerns	No	May exist	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Drawbacks	Biologically far from mammals Primitive immune system	Not a physiological setting	Biologically far from mammals Low degree of homology with human genes	Difficult to scale and handling system (it flies)	Difficult testing of non-soluble molecules	Facilities and breeding requirements