Xenografting of psoriasis skin onto immune deficient mice has been widely used to obtain proof-of-principle of new drug candidates. However, the lack of human T-cell activity in the grafts limits the use of the model. Here, we show that xenografting of lesional skin from psoriasis patients onto human IL-2 NOG mice results in increased numbers of human CD3+ cells in the grafts, axillary lymph nodes and blood from human IL-2 NOG mice compared to C.B-17 scid and NOG mice. In addition, disease relevant human cytokine levels were higher in graft lysates and serum from human IL-2 NOG mice. However, the epidermis was lacking and no efficacy of ustekinumab, a human anti-P40 antibody targeting both IL-12 and IL-23, was shown. Thus, despite the sustained T-cell activity, the model needs further investigations and validation to capture more aspects of psoriasis.
Copyright: © 2023 Christensen et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.