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Mice and More
The goal of this project is to develop a mouse model that is permissive for HCV infection and allows the prediction of human immune response against HCV.
Given the technical feasibility of human immune system development in mice
(HIS mice) on the one hand, and the ability to generate human chimeric livers
in mice (HUHEP mice) on the other, we reasoned that a mouse model incorporating
both these qualities would be an extremely attractive tool to address the problem
of deciphering the human immune response to HCV infection in an in vivo model
system. Several aspects of HCV infection would be accessible to study using
HIS/HUHEP mice, including
I) The role of the immune response in HCV-induced liver pathology
in primary infection and in the progression to cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma;
II) The role of prophylactic immunization and /or immune modulation
in the outcome of primary HCV infection, and
III) The role of therapeutic immune manipulation in HCV-induced
pathophysiologies. As such, HIS/HUHEP mice could provide an essential tool
to devise and test candidate vaccines for HCV (and potentially other liver-targeted
human pathologies as well).
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