Mucositis occurs to some degree in more than one third of patients receiving anti-neoplastic drug therapy, resulting in lower quality of life, a reduction in adherence to the treatment schedule, and potentially more serious complications such as bacteremia. In the acute radiation-induced oral mucositis model at BioModels, a bolus x-ray radiation dose is delivered to the cheek pouch of hamsters while the rest of the animal’s body is shielded. Hamsters provide an excellent model for oral mucositis because of several biological similarities to humans providing high predictive validity. Ulceration of the cheek pouch oral mucosa approximately 16-18 days after radiation. Primary endpoints in this model include clinical mucositis scoring using a validated scale and analysis of the frequency and duration of ulceration, mimicking the key endpoints in cancer patients. Radio-sensitizing chemotherapy can also be combined with radiation treatment.

• Advantages: highly consistent disease induction, good for screening potential drug candidates, highly predictive for success of potential therapies in the clinic, easy to dose topical therapies.
• Disadvantages: less clinically relevant radiation treatment schedule compared to the fractionated model.

• Golden Syrian Hamster

• Percent weight change
• Survival
• Clinical oral mucositis evaluation using validated scoring scale
• Analyses of frequency and duration of ulceration
• Terminal histopathology and/or IHC analyses

• Local and systemic biomarker analysis
• Custom assays