Personalized Immune Mouse to Study Autoimmune Disease

Columbia University Medical Center scientists have developed a new “personalized immune mouse,” a new tool that allows them to re-create an individual’s immune system to study autoimmune diseases. The mouse model also could have clinical applications, such as predicting how a particular patient might respond to existing drugs or immunotherapies. And, it could prove useful for developing individualized immunotherapies for fighting infection or cancer or for lessening a patient’s rejection of transplanted tissue.

The mouse model is made by transplanting human bone marrow stem cells (also known as CD34+ cells), along with a small amount of HLA-matched immature thymus tissue, into an immunodeficient mouse. The thymus tissue is implanted into the mouse’s kidney capsule, a thin membrane that envelops the kidney and serves as an incubator. Within six to eight weeks, the transplanted thymus tissue is seeded by circulating human CD34+ cells (which are infused into the mouse’s bloodstream), and begins generating human immune cells from the CD34+ cells.

While the researchers intend to use the personalized immune mouse to study type 1 diabetes, Dr. Megan Sykes, director for the Columbia Center for Translational Immunology, says that they “hope to find out what is fundamentally different about patients’ immune systems, compared with those of healthy individuals, before any disease develops.”