Engraftment of Human Immune System and Human Tumor Xenograft in Murine Models: Applications in Oncology Drug Discovery

Abstract

Abstract The development of animal models capable of mimicking human immune responses and function as a host of human tumor xenograft are crucial to study the safety and efficacy of immune checkpoint inhibitors, functionality of CAR-T therapies, and immuno-oncology treatment including gene and cell therapies. Mice reconstituted with human hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) are able to stably differentiate and repopulate human immune cells sufficient to model many aspects of tumor immunity. Taconic’s CIEA NOG mouse ® (NOG) portfolio is one of such powerful tools: capable of accepting human HSC which develops into multiple immune cells including T cells, as well as ideal hosts for human tumor xenografts due to its hyper immune deficiency caused by IL-2Rg mutation and NOD/Scid background. In partnership with the Central Institute for Experimental Animals (CIEA), Taconic has developed a variety of next generation immune-deficient NOG mice that are suitable and highly effective at modeling the diverse mechanistic functions of human immunity as well as being the host for human tumor xenograft including patient derived xenograft (PDX). This presentation will focus on the current state of human immune system engraftment models (huNOG and huNOG-EXL) and utilization of wide range of NOG mice portfolio as the next generation models that diversify the mechanistic functionality of immune engraftment and recent advances in modeling human immunity in immuno-oncology applications.