Data from: The chinchilla as a novel animal model of pregnancy

Several parameters are important when choosing the most appropriate animal to model human obstetrics including gestation period, number of fetuses per gestation, and placental structure. The domesticated long-tailed chinchilla (Chinchilla lanigera) is a well-suited and appropriate animal model of pregnancy that often will carry only one offspring and has a long gestation period of 105-115 days. Furthermore, the chinchilla placenta is of the hemomonochorial labyrinthine type and is therefore comparable to the human villous hemomonochorial placenta. This proof-of-concept study demonstrated the feasibility in laboratory settings, and demonstrated the potential of the pregnant chinchilla as an animal model for obstetric research and its potential usefulness for non-invasive measurements in the placenta. We demonstrate measurements of the placental and fetal metabolism (demonstrated in-vivo by hyperpolarized MRI and in-vitro by qPCR analyses), placental vessels (demonstrated ex-vivo by contrast-enhanced CT angiography), and overall anatomy (demonstrated in-vivo by whole-body CT).

在遴选最适配人类妇产科学研究的动物模型时，需考量多项关键参数：妊娠期、每胎胎儿数及胎盘结构。驯化长尾毛丝鼠（Chinchilla lanigera）是适配性极佳的妊娠动物模型，其通常每胎仅产1仔，且妊娠期长达105~115天。此外，毛丝鼠的胎盘属于迷路型血绒毛膜胎盘（hemomonochorial labyrinthine type），因此与人类的绒毛状血绒毛膜胎盘具有较高可比性。本概念验证研究在实验室环境中验证了该模型的可行性，证实了妊娠毛丝鼠作为妇产科学研究动物模型的应用潜力，以及其在胎盘无创检测中的应用价值。本研究完成了多项检测：胎盘与胎儿代谢检测（体内检测采用超极化磁共振成像（hyperpolarized MRI），体外检测采用定量聚合酶链反应（qPCR）分析）、胎盘血管检测（离体检测采用增强CT血管造影（contrast-enhanced CT angiography））以及整体解剖结构成像（体内检测采用全身CT（whole-body CT））。