Why isn’t a laboratory mouse more like a human? There are several answers, beyond the differences in size and physiology between mice and humans, such as microbiome and immunological experience. Emory researchers led by Mandy Ford and Craig Coopersmith recently published a couple papers that aim to take those factors into account.

The goal is to make mouse immune systems and microbiomes more complex and more like those in humans, so the mice they can better model the deadly derangement of sepsis. So far, sepsis research in mice has been a poor predictor of clinical success. This aligns with work at the National Institutes of Health on “wildling” mice, which have microbes more like wild mice. (Lab Land likes noticing a trend that Emory researchers are part of.)

One Emory paper, in FASEB Journal, shows that mortality in a mouse model of sepsis varies according to the commercial facility where the mice came from. When the mice were allowed to live together and exchange microbes, mortality numbers evened out.

Another, published in JCI Insight, looks at mice that have more memory T cells than naïve mice, since adult humans have a high proportion of memory T cells in their immune systems. Other scientists have shown that sepsis leads to a wipeout of memory T cells, and probably vulnerability in defending against infection.

The “memory mice” were immunized against Listeria bacteria and LCMV virus. Although the researchers didn’t observe a significant effect on mortality in sepsis with the memory mice, they suggest an explanation: the mice had only two infections to generate higher numbers of memory T cells. The JCI Insight results do support Ford and Coopersmith’s proposal that blocking the molecule 2B4 could limit the wipeout of memory T cells during sepsis. More on the 2B4 research here.