Mouse With Human Immune System May Revolutionize HIV Vaccine Research

ScienceDaily (July 18, 2012) — One of the challenges to HIV vaccine development has been the lack of an animal model that accurately reflects the human immune response to the virus and how the virus evolves to evade that response. In the July 18 issue of Science Translational Medicine, researchers from the Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), MIT and Harvard report that a model created by transplanting elements of the human immune system into an immunodeficient mouse addresses these key issues and has the potential to reduce significantly the time and costs required to test candidate vaccines.

"Our study showed not only that these humanized mice mount human immune responses against HIV but also that the ability of HIV to evade these responses by mutating viral proteins targeted by CD8 'killer' T cells is accurately reflected in these mice," says Todd Allen, PhD, senior author of the report. "For the first time we have an animal model that accurately reproduces critical host-pathogen interactions, a model that will help facilitate the development an effective vaccine for HIV." Recent studies by Allen's team and others have revealed that immune control of HIV is significantly limited by the ability of the virus to evade immune responses by rapidly mutating.


Continued:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120718143911.htm