Galleria mellonella L. as model organism used in biomedical and other studies

Comparative of studies of genomes of invertebrates and humans shows that in invertebrates including insects there are numerous homologues of human’s genes coding proteins involved in recognition pathogens or transduction of the expression signal. Thanks this features, insects such as Drosophila melanogaster M., Blattella germanica L., Culex quinquefasciatus S., Bombyx mori L. and Galleria mellonella L. are used in studies on virulence, host resistance or in assessing the in vivo efficacy of antibiotics, fungicides and other biologically active substances. G. mellonella (greater wax moth) are rapid growth, high fertility, size and short life cycle insects- these are features that should be met by good model organisms; therefore the number of researches with larvae of wax moth as the model organism for pathogens assays grows from year to year. This is showing by number of scientific publications about infection’s model of G. mellonella. An obstacle in the wide use of G. mellonella caterpillars as a model in biomedical research is the lack of standardized breeding of these insects, which would guarantee the reproducibility of the obtained results and lack of procedures and standards according to which biomedical research will be carried out. Despite this, the G. mellonella model can be used in the initial analysis before conventional in vivo tests and to reduce the number of tests performed on mammals.