Dr. Marcus Bosenberg on Mouse and Other Models for Immunotherapy

Marcus Bosenberg, MD, PhD, associate professor of dermatology and pathology, Yale University, discusses mouse models for testing immunotherapies.

There are two main types of models, says Bosenberg. In one type, the mouse has an intact immune system and tumors can be grafted in. In this case, the mouse serves as a human equivalent, even though there's no human tissue involved. Some people have criticized this method because of the lack of human tissue, says Bosenberg.

A humanized mouse model can also be created by putting a human immune system in a mouse and then, using human cancer cells, observe how that immune reaction works.

This is very difficult to do, says Bosenberg. However, a lot of progress has been made in this area.

There are also other non-mouse models that are used in immunotherapy. For example, dogs have a very high rate of melanoma, so potentially dogs could also be used as a spontaneous model for immunotherapy development.

This however, would take a significant amount of infrastructure to make work, says Bosenberg. While this has not occurred yet, it is a possibility, he says

Bosenberg will speak on the topic of future directions in cancer immune models at the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) 31st Annual Meeting & Associated Programs November 9-13, 2016.