PDX Mice Act As Apt Model Organisms In HIV Treatment Experiments

In an effort to develop a remarkable bioassay model for the diagnosis and treatment of HIV infection, a team of researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine Centre conducted several lab trials and found that common mice cannot be contaminated by HIV. Hence, the scientists substituted those small lab mammals with new model organisms susceptible to HIV infection. The key difference between the common mice and the HIV-susceptible mice is that the latter one is comprised of human CD4 T cells. The research paper explicating the study outcomes is available in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.

The creation of the new xenografted mice, also known as “Patient-derived xenograft” or PDX mice, is a phenomenal achievement that found the basis for HIV treatment using T-cell therapy. This model organism, with the aid of human-originated CD4 cells, imitated the conditions favorable for the viral infection. The researchers were influenced to develop PDX mice from an earlier study, which involved another PDX model organism to examine the efficiencies of multiple types of cell therapies against tumors.

Dr. Jonas and Dr. MacCan, the expertise in cell therapy and immunology, revealed that the PBX mice employed in the experiment were majorly suffering from autoimmune disorder owing to the presence of CD4 cells. Instead of targeting the antigen, these cells began to injure host cells by attacking the self-proteins thereby causing deadly complications within the host body. However, with the incorporation of memory CD4 cells in the host organisms, the impact of autoimmune disease was significantly declined.

During this pre-clinical trial, the researchers isolated CD4 T-cells from human blood and injected them into the mice. Later, the researchers incubated the model organisms for the effectual dissemination of the cells and infected them with HIV. After that, they initiated treatment by infusing killer-T-cell extracted from the same donor. Moreover, to enhance the effect of the killer cells, a renowned cytokine, IL-15, was also injected. It eventually prevented the pathogen to undergo a “viral escape” process.

The researchers accomplished an overwhelming success by intentionally infecting PDX mice with HIV. And this achievement is likely to revolutionize cell therapies to evade the risk of viral escape.