Enhanced Development of Functional Human Natural Killer Cells for Preclinical Study in the Greiner and Brehm Labs
The laboratories of Dale Greiner, PhD, and Michael Brehm, PhD, specialize in the creation and utilization of “humanized” mouse models used for preclinical studies. Their research focuses on understanding human immune responses, both how to modulate them for the treatment of type 1 diabetes and autoimmunity, and conversely, utilizing the same pathways to activate immune responses for cancer treatments.
Immunotherapy has revolutionized the treatment of human diseases, improving survival rates for several types of cancer. There are still many cancer patients for whom current immunotherapies are not yet available. A study published in the Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) describes a new humanized mouse model that enhances the development of Natural Killer (NK) cells, which are emerging as key targets for cancer immunotherapy.
“We can generate human immune systems inside of our mice to understand why these systems develop the way they do and how they function,” said Dr. Greiner, the Herman G. Berkman Chair in Diabetes Care Innovation, Professor of Molecular Medicine, and co-director of the UMass Chan Diabetes Center of Excellence. “We can take a tumor from any individual patient for whom chemotherapy and standard therapeutic approaches have failed, grow that tumor into dozens of mice, and test whatever drugs we want.”
“The human innate immune system plays a critical role in immunoregulation within the tumor microenvironment,” said Dr. Brehm, Associate Professor of Molecular Medicine and co-director of the Humanized Mouse Core Facility at UMass Chan. ”A limitation of using humanized mice in cancer research has been the lack of development and survival of NK cells after engrafting hematopoietic stem cells or peripheral blood mononuclear cells into the mice.”
In this study, the Brehm and Greiner labs describe a novel humanized mouse model with improved NK cell acceptance and functionality. Their data explain the potential for this in vivo model to study human NK cell biology and test new human-specific immune therapies that target NK cells.