Taconic Biosciences Seminar at The Institute for Regeneration and Repair (IRR)

Even minor setbacks in project decision-making can lead to major pitfalls and ultimately impact research timelines, cost, and quality. Dominique highlights case studies where leveraging CRISPR/Cas9 technology was the right decision, and when traditional homologous recombination makes sense.

Introduction to Humanized Immune System Mice

Immunodeficient mice have been integral tools for preclinical research and drug development for many years. These mice have been classically used when human cells and/or tissues are required. The applications are broad, ranging from safety assessment, infectious disease, oncology and immuno-oncology to autoimmune disease and much more.

Several different super-immunodeficient mouse strains have been developed such as the NOG and NSG strains. These mice lack mature T, B, and NK cells allowing for increasingly more advanced humanization including human immune system and engraftment with difficult human cells lines and patient derived tumors (PDX). The humanization can be done with peripheral blood mononuclear cells PMBCs, which are differentiated mature cells from adult donors, hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) or more specific cell populations such as NK cells.

In this presentation you will learn about:

• The concept of humanized immune system mice and why we need them
• The various methods to generate humanized immune system mice
• The strengths and limitations of different methods of humanization
• The various strains used to generate HIS mice and the importance of selection of the right model