Abstract
Major depression is one of the most disabling disorders, yet the pathogenesis of this mental disorder is poorly understood. The techniques of proteomics provide us with powerful tools, while the animal models of depression enable research that cannot be performed on humans due to practical difficulties or ethical reasons. In this review, we summarize the characteristics of some most commonly applied rat models of depression, and explore what could be done with novel proteomic approaches to offer an insight to the pathogenesis of major depression, biomarker establishment and drug development.
Acknowledgements
We thank Dr Timothy Veenstra, Dr Katrin Marcus and the Commissioning Editor Nicole Nogoy, for inviting us to contribute this review. We also thank professor Liu Shao-jun in the Military Medical University for editing the manuscript.
Financial & competing interests disclosure
This work is supported by a grant from National Nature Science Foundation of China (No. 30570657). The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.
No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.