Taconic Biosciences at the American Association for Cancer Research® (AACR) 2024! 

Poster Board #3: Tumor-reactive CD8 TIL with an exhausted phenotype can be expanded and regress human tumors | View Poster
Presented by AgonOx

Using Taconic hIL-2 NOG mice, scientists at AgonOx showcased the power of expanded DP TIL therapy against autologous tumors. This is the first study showing that CD8 T cells with an exhausted phenotype isolated from human tumors can be expanded to billions of cells and induce tumor regression in vivo.

Poster Board #23: Assessment of therapeutic antibody efficacy without the interference of murine Fc receptors allows for investigation of human antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity mediated by NK cells in the FcResolv® hIL-15 NOG mouse model | View Poster
EPO in collaboration with Taconic

In a collaboration between researchers at Taconic and EPO, scientists used the Taconic FcResolv® hIL-15 NOG and the hIL-15 NOG mouse models to understand therapeutic antibody efficacy in the context of cancer. 

Overall, results demonstrate that FcResolv® hIL-15 NOG mice serve as a suitable mouse model for a more accurate assessment of the therapeutic efficacy of anti-tumor antibodies. Additionally, evaluation of human-mediated ADCC of therapeutic antibodies in NK cell-humanized FcResolv® hIL-15 NOG mice allows detection of effects specifically mediated by human NK cells.

Poster Board #17: Digital PCR as a novel way to assess chimerism of humanized immune system mice | View Poster
Taconic in collaboration with IDEXX BioAnalytics 

Scientists at Taconic and IDEXX BioAnalytics collaborated to understand how chimerism in humanized immune system mice can be assessed using digital PCR. In addition to technical limitations associated with traditional flow cytometry, repeated bleeding of mice can negatively affect their health, making digital PCR a more robust method as it requires a smaller blood volume (10 µL compared to 75 µL in flow cytometry). 

Overall, the digital PCR assay shows excellent correlation for all three human genes against chimerism as measured by flow cytometry of the peripheral blood at 10 weeks post engraftment. This assay may also be useful to investigate other mouse-human chimera models, including mice harboring functional human hepatocytes, tumors, and other cells.

Poster Board #17: Single-cell proteomic characterization of the tumor microenvironment in humanized NOG-EXL patient-derived xenograft (PDX) models | View Poster
University of Toronto, University Health Network, ETH Zurich, and Sinai Health System in collaboration with Taconic 

Using single-cell proteomic analyses, researchers used patient-derived xenografts in immunodeficient mouse models to characterize the tumor immune microenvironment. Humanized NOG-EXL (huNOG-EXL) mice offered by Taconic express human IL-3 and GM-CSF enabling both myeloid and lymphoid development. 

Notably, huNOG-EXL PDX mice contain all major human immune cell types including therapeutically relevant populations such as PD-1+ CD8+ T cells. The PDX immune microenvironment recapitulates key features of the primary tumor, with PDX replicates highly consistent.

Poster Board #14: Humanization of NOG mice and next-generation NOG strains to induce lineage-specific differentiation of immune cells for assessment of novel immune cell therapies, check point inhibitors, and immune cell engagers for translational immuno-oncology research | View Poster
EPO in collaboration with Taconic

In a collaboration between Experimental Pharmacology & Oncology GmbH and Taconic Biosciences, researchers used NOG and next-generation NOG mouse models to investigate CDX and PDX engraftment and to assess the efficacy of checkpoint inhibitors. They found that NOG-EXL mice are characterized by the highest engraftment rate with a myeloid differentiation of immune cells, also observed in the hIL-6 NOG and FcResolv® NOG mouse strains. They also noted that these  humanized NOG models can be used to evaluate immunotherapies, with broad applications in immunology and oncology studies.

Poster Board #17: Profiling of human CD34+ donors in a myeloid-supportive HIS model provides increased predictability and facilitates study design for evaluation of immuno-oncology therapeutics | View Poster
Taconic in collaboration with Bolt Biotherapeutics  

In collaboration with scientists at Bolt Therapeutics, Taconic researchers sought to determine if parameters critical to drug discovery are consistent across batches of humanized immune system mice from the same donor by evaluating two independent cohorts of human tumor xenograft-bearing mice made using a common set of five different CD34+ cell donors. 

They found that the health trajectory, peripheral human immune cell engraftment, and PK profiles were similar across experiments for a given donor. The promising results of the study have broad implications in building donor profiles for greater predictability and facilitating study design for drug discovery.

Poster Board #18: Evaluation of checkpoint inhibitor efficacy in a humanized immune system mouse model lacking murine Fc gamma receptors | View Poster
Taconic in collaboration with Oncodesign Services   

Researchers sought to determine how knocking out the Fc gamma receptor in a super immunodeficient mouse model would alter efficacy of an IgG4 mAb checkpoint inhibitor (anti-PD1), Overall, they remark that FcResolv® NOG strains represent a cleaner system for efficacy studies of antibody-based therapies which remove potential confounding variables due to interactions with murine Fc gamma receptor.