Development of preclinical model to study SARS-CoV-2 physiopathology and vaccination

Véronique Godot leader of the preclinical model division and Roger Le Grand, director of IDMIT

Véronique Godot and her team are implementing two preclinical mouse models to study the anti-SARS-CoV-2 vaccines: (i) mice humanized for the immune system allowing to study in depth human immune of different vaccine combinations and (ii) mice transgenic for human CD40 and human ACE2 that can be challenged after vaccination.
Roger Le Grand at IDMIT has established an experimental model of SARS-CoV-2 infection as recently published (DOI: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-27223/v1). Mauritian cynomolgus macaques exposed by combined intranasal and intratracheal route to BetaCoV/France/IDF/0372/2020 patient isolate (Institut Pasteur, France) develop infection and exhibited clinical signs comparable to those reported in the majority of human cases during the early infection period, including early lymphopenia (2 dpi) and coughing or sneezing without dyspnea.