Application of the nephrotoxic serum nephritis model in glomerulonephritis research.

Glomerulonephritis represents a significant public health challenge and frequently progresses to end-stage renal disease, which requires dialysis and ultimately organ transplantation. Animal models are crucial tools in biomedical research, providing experimentally feasible approaches to investigate the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying disease pathogenesis. This review focuses on the nephrotoxic serum nephritis (NTN, also referred to as nephrotoxic nephritis) model, a glomerulonephritis animal model induced by nephrotoxic serum, which recapitulates key pathological features of immune-mediated glomerular diseases. We provide an overview of the model’s historical development, induction methods, renal pathological characteristics, and applications in the study of glomerulonephritis, lupus nephritis, renal fibrosis, among others. The target audience of this review comprises investigators in nephrology and immunology who employ, or are considering the use of, experimental models to study antibody-mediated glomerular injury.