Role of animal models in understanding intravesical therapy with bacille Calmette-Guerin

Animal models provide a vehicle for understanding basic biological question s. Through the use of animal models, adequate control of experimental desig n is possible so that rigorous experiments can be performed to test a hypot hesis. In the case of testing therapeutic mechanisms, it is important to se lect a model that is most analogous to the clinical setting so that observa tions can be readily transferred to clinical studies for validation. In mec hanistic studies of Mycobacterium bovis strain (bacille Calmette-Guerin) th erapy for bladder cancer, the orthotopic animal model most closely mimics t he clinical treatment of bladder cancer.