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Published on: August 29, 2012
Quantitative evaluation of the immunodeficiency of a mouse strain by tumor engraftments
Wei Ye1,2, Zhiwu Jiang3,4, Guan-Xiong Li5
1Key Laboratory of Regenerative Biology, South China Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, 510530, China. ye_wei@gibh.ac.cn.
Background:
The mouse is an organism that is widely used as a mammalian model for studying human physiology or disease, and the development of immunodeficient mice has provided a valuable tool for basic and applied human disease research. Following the development of large-scale mouse knockout programs and genome-editing tools, it has become increasingly efficient to generate genetically modified mouse strains with immunodeficiency. However, due to the lack of a standardized system for evaluating the immuno-capacity that prevents tumor progression in mice, an objective choice of the appropriate immunodeficient mouse strains to be used for tumor engrafting experiments is difficult.
Methods:
In this study, we developed a tumor engraftment index (TEI) to quantify the immunodeficiency response to hematologic malignant cells and solid tumor cells of six immunodeficient mouse strains and C57BL/6 wild-type mouse (WT).
Results:
Mice with a more severely impaired immune system attained a higher TEI score. We then validated that the NOD-scid-IL2Rg-/- (NSI) mice, which had the highest TEI score, were more suitable for xenograft and allograft experiments using multiple functional assays.
Conclusions:
The TEI score was effectively able to reflect the immunodeficiency of a mouse strain.
