Engraftment of Human Hepatocytes in the PiZ-NSG Mouse Model

We recently described the generation of a novel mouse strain that efficiently and readily engrafts human primary hepatocytes to create liver xenografts (Borel et al., Mol Ther, 25: 2477-89, 2017). A transgenic mouse strain expressing a human PiZ allele for the SerpinA1 gene was crossed with the NOD-SCID-gamma chain knockout (NSG) strain to create a recipient strain (PiZ-NSG) for human hepatocyte xenotransplantation. In this chapter we provide a description of the methods to achieve these liver xenografts in the PiZ-NSG mouse.