【Animal Modeling】-How to build a mouse model for vaccine research

  In order to develop vaccines and study the human immune response, scientists rely on a variety of animal models, including mice that can produce human antibodies through genetically engineered B cell receptors, which are specialized antibodies that bind to B cell membranes. However, these mice usually take years to develop, requiring complex genetic modification and careful reproduction.

  Dr. Facundo Batista, deputy director of the MGH, MIT and Harvard Ragon Institute, said: "The time to produce these specialized mice has always been a major factor in delaying vaccine development. With the latest developments in gene editing technologies such as CRISPR/Cas9, We knew that there must be a way to greatly speed up this process." The Batista team developed a new method to generate mouse strains for preclinical vaccine evaluation, which greatly shortened this timeline. In a study recently published in the EMBO Journal, this one-step method using CRISPR/Cas9 technology can produce mice with genetically engineered human B-cell receptors in just a few weeks.