Human-like immune systems can now be recreated in mice, using special blood cells, a Spanish study has shown.  

Immunity plays an important part in fighting cancer, with treatments called immunotherapies geared towards getting the body’s immune system to recognise and kill cancer cells.

Mice are a key animal to study the complexities of the human immune system, but previous methods for generating mice with human immune cells were either too slow, or often led to the animals’ own tissues being attacked (graft-v-host disease).

The research, at the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute, Barcelona, used human cells from cord blood – that remains in the placenta and umbilical cord after a birth – to produce immune cells that accurately represented aspects of both the human innate and adaptive immune system (respectively what you are born with and what your body learns). 

When the researchers transplanted the immune cells, derived from the cord blood cells into mice that had no immune system of their own, they saw there was a very low risk of the graft-v-host disease problem.

The team also showed that these mice could tolerate the transplantation of human blood cancer cells better than normal mice (more of them survived, for example), as well as mimic a realistic immune response. 

The study, published in the Journal for Immunotherapy of Cancer, holds promise for an improved way to investigate how the immune system works to fight cancer, and develop immunotherapies.