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Leveraging dirty mice that have microbial exposure to improve preclinical models of human immune status and disease

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) hosted a two-day virtual workshop on leveraging microbial exposure to improve mouse models of human immune status and disease. The workshop’s objective was to evaluate the current state of knowledge in the field and to identify gaps, challenges and future directions.

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Fig. 1: Immune responses and diseases of microbial experienced humans and mice compared to those of SPF mice.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the invited speakers, and the audience for sharing expertise and stimulating discussions, and reviewing the report. We thank W. Leitner and A. Augustine for editing the report and providing comments. B.R. was supported by the intramural research program of NIDDK, NIH.

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Correspondence to Qian Liu or Barbara Rehermann.

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B.R. discloses that NIDDK granted a license on the WildR mice to Taconic Biosciences and has a Collaborative Research Agreement and Development Award with Genentech. The remaining authors declare no competing interests.

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Liu, Q., Pickett, T., Hodge, D. et al. Leveraging dirty mice that have microbial exposure to improve preclinical models of human immune status and disease. Nat Immunol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41590-024-01842-9

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