Thyroid carcinoma ranks first among the malignant endocrine tumors. Immunodeficient mice or rat models of thyroid cancer-cell-line transplantation represent microcosms of human thyroid cancer, which are of great significance for the study of the pathogenesis of thyroid cancer, drug therapy and the mechanism of iodine-131 treatment. Understanding the key influences in the modeling of thyroid cancer immunodeficient mice or rats could improve the success rate of modeling. Therefore, the factors affecting the successful modeling of human thyroid cancer cell-lines in immunodeficient mice and rats are briefly reviewed in this paper.