Groundbreaking Mouse Model with Human Immune System Developed for Advanced Research
TapTechNews July 8th news, scientists have successfully developed a mouse model with a complete and fully functioning human immune system, which is also said to have human-like intestinal flora and can generate specific antibody responses.
This research comes from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, and the humanized mouse developed is named TruHuX (meaning truly human, or THX).
Researchers said that the model has lymph nodes, germinal centers, thymic human epithelial cells, human T and B lymphocytes, memory B lymphocytes, and plasma cells, and these cells can generate exactly the same specific antibodies and autoantibodies as humans.
Dr. Paolo Casali, Distinguished Professor and Ashbel Smith Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Texas, said: By cleverly using estrogen activity to support the differentiation of human stem cells and human immune cells and antibody responses, THX mice provide a platform for human immune system research, human vaccine development, and therapeutic drug testing.
Dr. Casali believes that this new discovery opens a new avenue for in vivo experiments in humans, including the development of immune therapeutics such as cancer checkpoint inhibitors, human bacterial and viral vaccines, and the modeling of multiple human diseases.
According to research published in the journal Nature, these mice show a diverse repertoire of human B cell and T cell antigen receptors and can generate mature T cell-dependent and T cell-independent antibody responses, including somatic hypermutation, antibody class-switch recombination, and plasma cell and memory B cell differentiation. Notably, these mice can also develop lupus-like autoimmune diseases after being injected with certain substances.
By using estrogen activity to support the maturation of human immune cell differentiation and antibody responses, THX mice provide a platform for researching the human immune system, developing human vaccines, and therapeutic drugs.
After the advent of the THX model, Casali's laboratory is currently studying the in vivo human immune responses caused by SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) at the systemic and local levels. They also study human memory B cells, their dependence on the generation of nuclear receptor RORα, and the events that lead to RORα expression and dysregulation.
Researchers are also exploring the epigenetic factors and mechanisms that mediate the generation of human plasma cells (the antibody-producing cell factories that can generate thousands of antibodies per second against bacteria, viruses, or cancer cells).
According to TapTechNews, mice are frequently used in various biological and biomedical research projects due to their small size, ease of breeding, sharing of immune elements and biological characteristics with humans, and ease of genetic modification.