廖宇昕　   蔡郑东

Osteosarcoma is a type of relatively common primary malignant bone tumor in clinic which frequently occurs in children and adolescents. It is hard to cure thoroughly due to its high malignancy. Experimental animal model is 1 of the most important approaches for the research of human diseases. It will be beneficial to explore the pathogenesis, metastasis and drug resistance mechanism of osteosarcoma and to evaluate the therapeutic effect through the research of the animal model of osteosarcoma. 3 influence elements including experimental animal, cell line for transplantation and graft site should be taken into account when building the osteosarcoma animal model. The tumorigenesis rate and pulmonary metastasis rate of the osteosarcoma animal model constructed by different cell lines transplantated are distinctly not the same. Higher tumorigenesis rate and pulmonary metastasis rate can be found in orthotopic implantation model comparing with heterotopic transplantation model. At the same time, the biological characteristics of transplantable tumor obtained by orthotopic implantation resemble clinical features of human osteosarcoma. Hence, it can imitate human disease more efficiently. At present, the application of osteosarcoma animal model is mainly composed of tumor morphological observation, metastasis mechanism research, interaction mechanism between different cells and the assessment of therapeutic effects. This article mainly reviews how to establish the osteosarcoma animal model, the comparison between different methods to build the model and their specific applications.