Frontiers in Bioscience-Landmark (FBL) is published by IMR Press from Volume 26 Issue 5 (2021). Previous articles were published by another publisher on a subscription basis, and they are hosted by IMR Press on imrpress.com as a courtesy and upon agreement with Frontiers in Bioscience.
The successful engraftment of human tumors and human immunocompetent cells into severe combined immunodeficient (SCID) mice has led to the generation of a wide array of different experimental designs that have proven useful in studying the cell biology of human cancer, and for evaluating novel therapeutic approaches to the treatment of cancer. In this review five of the most frequently used embodiments of the SCID model are presented. The goals of this review are to discuss how each model has been utilized to study human cancer and its response to many different novel therapies, to provide an assessment of the strengths and limitations of each model, and to outline future directions with a focus on what is needed to overcome some of the current limitations and pitfalls of the SCID models.