Timeframe: 2023 – 2024
Goal: Immunocompetent mouse model development
Principal Investigator: Julien Sage, PhD
Study overview: Dr. Julien Sage has a very longstanding interest in FLC and is recognized as a world leader in the type of genetic modeling in mice proposed in this study. This study proposes to extend Dr. Sage’s team’s previous work by taking four tumor lines generated from mouse tumors in immune-deficient mice, characterizing those tumors, propagating them in mice with intact immune systems to allow investigation of the interactions between FLC tumor cells and immune cells, which may be important for the development of future immunotherapies. In addition the study will use these models to test the response of FLC cells to a therapy targeting the cell cycle machinery, to stop the proliferation of FLC cells.
Currently, the absence of “pure” immunocompetent mouse models of FLC remains a conspicuous gap in FLC model systems. These new pre-clinical mouse models of FLC will complement human models and will hopefully help identify new therapeutic options in patients with FLC.