Humanized Immune Checkpoint VISTA mouse model contributes to research published in Science

ElTanbouly MA, Zhao Y, et al. Science. 2020
VISTA is a checkpoint regulator for naïve T cell quiescence and peripheral tolerance.

A humanized VISTA mouse developed by genOway has proved to be an excellent tool to unveil a new role for this immune checkpoint inhibitor, already known to play a key role in suppressing T cell activation.

In this study, freshly published in Science, a team of researchers at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth and ImmuNext performed in vivo analyses, demonstrating that VISTA is critical in maintaining T cell self-tolerance. This was elegantly shown by targeting VISTA with agonist and antagonist antibodies, whose specificity was assessed in the humanized VISTA mouse model as well as in other human and murine samples.