Evaluation of New Mouse Models for Typhoid Fever

Egil Lien with collaborators Beth McCormick and Mike Brehm of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in the U.S. will evaluate two mouse models for studying human typhoid fever. Typhoid fever is a major cause of environmental enteric dysfunction, which is associated with significant morbidity and mortality particularly in young children from developing countries. The causative Salmonella bacterium does not normally infect mice, hindering the development of mouse models for testing new treatments and vaccines. However mice lacking the innate immune receptor toll-like receptor 11 (TLR11) and humanized NOD-SID-IL-2Rg (NSG) mice can be infected. They will analyze the characteristics of typhoid fever in these two mouse models and the effect of current treatments.