Abstract
One of the best animal approaches for testing HIV vaccines is the challenge of vaccinated rhesus macaques with SHIV or SIV. Production of rhesus macaques in which all of the MHC class I and II alleles are known represents an opportunity to characterize the entire immune response to SIV and should be an invaluable resource for understanding pathogenesis and vaccine-induced immune responses. Unfortunately, there are few MHC-defined rhesus macaques available for vaccine research. Selective breeding supports the production of limited numbers of macaques that express particular MHC class I alleles. If both parents express the allele of interest, only three quarters of the offspring will express the same allele. However, assisted reproductive technologies, such as in vitro fertilization (IVF) and embryo transfer, can be used for production of MHC-defined macaques, expressing multiple MHC class I and II molecules for which SIV peptides, tetramers and ELISPOT assays exist. Here, we report the birth of MHC-defined rhesus monkeys produced by assisted reproductive technology. Continued improvements in assisted reproductive technologies in rhesus monkeys will enable us to develop a unique prototypic animal production program for the creation of MHC-defined and genetically-identical monkeys for vaccine research.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 603-607 |
Number of pages | 5 |
Journal | Vaccine |
Volume | 20 |
Issue number | 3-4 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Nov 12 2001 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Assisted reproductive technology
- MHC-defined monkeys
- SIV vaccine
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Immunology
- Microbiology
- Virology
- Infectious Diseases
- Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
- veterinary(all)