Liver-specific transgenic expression of human NTCP in rhesus macaques confers HBV susceptibility on primary hepatocytes.

ABSTRACT: Hepatitis B virus (HBV) poses a significant global health challenge, necessitating the urgent development of curative therapeutics. However, this progress is impeded by the lack of robust, immunocompetent preclinical animal models due to HBV's strict species specificity. We previously showed that vector-mediated expression of the HBV entry receptor, human sodium-taurocholate cotransporting polypeptide (hNTCP), renders macaques fully susceptible to HBV infection. In this study, we have generated transgenic macaques expressing hNTCP, marking the creation of the first transgenic nonhuman primate model for infectious disease research. We used PiggyBac (PB) transposon technology to insert a liver-specific hNTCP expression cassette into rhesus macaque zygotes and transferred the resulting embryo

SUBMITTER: Rust LN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11848295 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature