RESEARCH ARTICLE A Novel Mouse Model for Stable Engraftment of a Human Immune System and Human

Hepatic infections by hepatitis B virus (HBV), hepatitis C virus (HCV) and Plasmodium para-sites leading to acute or chronic diseases constitute a global health challenge. The species tropism of these hepatotropic pathogens is restricted to chimpanzees and humans, thus model systems to study their pathological mechanisms are severely limited. Although these pathogens infect hepatocytes, disease pathology is intimately related to the degree and quality of the immune response. As a first step to decipher the immune response to infected hepatocytes, we developed an animal model harboring both a human immune system (HIS) and human hepatocytes (HUHEP) in BALB/c Rag2-/- IL-2Rγc-/- NOD.sirpa uPAtg/tg mice. The extent and kinetics of human hepatocyte engraftment were similar between HUHEP and HIS-HUHEPmice. Transplanted human hepatocytes were polarized and mature in vivo, resulting in 20–50 % liver chimerism in these models. Human myeloid and lymphoid cell lineages developed at similar frequencies in HIS and HIS-HUHEP mice, and splenic and hepatic compartments were humanized with mature B cells, NK cells and naïve T cells, as well as monocytes and dendritic cells. Taken together, these results demonstrate that HIS-HUHEPmice can be stably (> 5 months) and robustly engrafted with a humanized im-mune system and chimeric human liver. This novel HIS-HUHEPmodel provides a platform to investigate human immune responses against hepatotropic pathogens and to test novel drug strategies or vaccine candidates