Mouse models are playing an integral role in COVID-19 drug discovery, both for vaccines and targeted therapeutics. In an interview with LAS Pro, Taconic Biosciences' Dr. Megan MacBride shared her insights on the many types of models helping to advance COVID-19 research, including transgenic mice that express human ACE2, mice that transgenically express human HLA variants, and mice that express human ApoE alleles associated with severe COVID-19 infection:
“A recent report indicated that the human apolipoprotein E4 allele may be associated with risk of more severe COVID-19 infections compared to other versions of this gene, perhaps related to the inflammatory and cardiovascular complications which are now being reported. We have a suite of mice which express each of the three common human ApoE alleles, as well as a murine ApoE knockout which may contribute to mechanistic investigations of this effect.
With the advent of mouse-adapted SARS-CoV-2 variants, standard strains such as BALB/c, C57BL/6 and 129S6 wil start to get used for COVID-19 studies, particularly aged mice which have been shown to develop more severe illness after infection with mouse-adapted SARS-CoV-2.”
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“A recent report indicated that the human apolipoprotein E4 allele may be associated with risk of more severe COVID-19 infections compared to other versions of this gene, perhaps related to the inflammatory and cardiovascular complications which are now being reported. We have a suite of mice which express each of the three common human ApoE alleles, as well as a murine ApoE knockout which may contribute to mechanistic investigations of this effect.With the advent of mouse-adapted SARS-CoV-2 variants, standard strains such as BALB/c, C57BL/6 and 129S6 wil start to get used for COVID-19 studies, particularly aged mice which have been shown to develop more severe illness after infection with mouse-adapted SARS-CoV-2.”