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Principal Investigator: Kathleen Engelman
Organization: UNIV OF MASSACHUSETTS MED SCH WORCESTER
Fiscal Year: 2024
Award: $621,016
Funding agency: NIH Office of the Director
Project Summary – Overall
Nonhuman primates (NHPs) have historically served as crucial animal models for diseases, and for testing
of new therapies and vaccines that cannot be evaluated in small animal models. The utility of NHP models in
research has been enhanced considerably by the use of immune cell depleting antibodies that can target and
lyse specific cell subsets in vivo. In models of infectious disease and vaccine testing, targeted immune cell
depletion has been used understand the pathogenesis of these infections and to design better vaccines to
prevent them. Furthermore, cell depletion can be an effective immune modulating therapy and the preclinical
testing of these cell-depleting antibody drugs is often conducted in nonhuman primates.
For the past 18 years, NIH has supported the Nonhuman Primate Reagent Resource’s efforts to develop,
characterize, manufacture and distribute immune cell depleting antibodies for use NHP models through a R24
grant. Need for this program has been confirmed by year-over-year growth in program activity since its inception.
Over the past year, this grant fulfilled over 125 requests for cell-depleting antibody reagents, supporting at least
50 different NIH grants or programs. Nearly 400 grams of cell-depleting antibody for administration to NHP was
distributed.
This grant proposes to continue this program providing immune cell depleting antibodies for use in NHPs by
maintaining the large-scale manufacture and quality control of the immune cell-depleting and control antibodies.
We will also develop antibodies against new targets and improve existing antibodies by engineering for more
efficient depletion. Our web-based infrastructure will be used for advertising reagents, receiving and fulfilling
requests, and measuring program effectiveness. Efforts to enhance rigor and transparency to improve
reproducibility will be accomplished by facilitating the authentication of key biological resources. Finally, we will
conduct applied research to enhance effector function of cell-depleting antibodies by exploring way to improve
cytotoxicity.
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