Table 1.

Use of Co-Clinical Models in Preclinical Imaging Research

	Advantages	Disadvantages	Considerations in Imaging
PDX	Ability to accurately reflect patients’ tumors in terms of the histomorphology, gene mutation and expression profiles, and gene copy number alterations Ability to predict therapeutic response in patients	Variable take rate Immuneocompromised background, although efforts are underway to develop humanized PDX models	Need to be credentialed/validated to match human tumor Need to document clinical information regarding the tumor of origin Genetic drift with subsequent passages may impact phenotype Experiments should be performed using low passage numbers Relative age of diseased mice is youngerthan corresponding patients
GEMMs	Gradual disease development Intact immune system Significant inter- and intra-tumor heterogeneity Recapitulate histopathological features of human tumors	High total cost Potential long time to tumor latency Single genetic alterations that may not match the genetic heterogeneity of human disease. Variability in penetrance and latency Potentially low mutational load	Relative age of diseased mice younger than corresponding patients Relatively large group size to address inter-mice heterogeneity
CTMs ofcancer	Match of driver mutations present in patients Faithfully maintaining underlying genetic basis of disease present in patients Rapidly producing large numbers of immunocompetent mice for treatment studies using syngeneic bone marrow transplants	Myeloablative conditioning regimens used to facilitate engraftment of transplanted HSCs in recipient animals Accelerated course of disease relative to patients.	Relative age of diseased mice younger than corresponding patients Accelerated disease progression makes some manifestations of disease, such as fibrosis, easier to reverse