Mouse models of bleomycin-induced pulmonary fibrosis.

Pulmonary fibrosis is a component of many interstitial lung diseases, including idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a chronic, progressive disease for which there is currently no effective therapy. Bleomycin has been widely used in rodents to model pulmonary fibrosis for the study of mechanisms involved in fibrogenesis and for evaluation of potential therapies. Bleomycin induces DNA strand breaks, resulting in pulmonary inflammation, injury, and subsequent interstitial fibrosis. This unit describes methods for delivering bleomycin, either directly into the lung or systemically, to create models of pulmonary fibrosis in rodents. Also described is a rapid and easy procedure for measuring lung collagen content to quantify the severity of fibrosis.