Humanized experimental models investigating in vivo human cells and their application for pharmacological research

Increasing interest is growing around the possibility to validate results obtained through experiments in cell cultures and in animal models to molecular mechanisms relevant in human diseases. The use of humanized mice expressing human transgenes or engrafted with functional human cells or tissues are usually used both to study human gene functions in healthy and diseased models, as well as to compare and test human cell therapies.
The aim of this course is to present different approaches used to generate humanized experimental mice and their relevance for recapitulating in vivo function of human cells in models of human diseases, including cancer, cardiometabolic, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. Attention will be put on immunodeficient mice engrafted with human hematopoietic stem cells for the study of immune-inflammatory response and their application for testing immunomodulatory therapies.