Hookvacc rewild

The project “Hookvacc rewild“ studies the hook-worm, which causes a tropical disease with high morbidity, affecting 700 million people worldwide. The goal of the project is to design a vaccine. As the laboratory models used so far do not reproduce the salient features of human infection, the project partners aim to use laboratory mice with the complex microbiome of wild mice, so-called wildling mice. Indeed, it was clearly shown that wildlings more closely resemble human immune responses. In two preclinical trials, where rodent and even non-human primate models had failed to predict the human response to harmful drug treatments, wildlings accurately phenocopied the human outcome and could have prevented these tragically failed clinical trials (Rosshart et al, Science, 2019). The project is led by the University of Basel and is carried out in cooperation with University of Freiburg. Eucor – The European Campus supports the consortium with the Seed Money funding instrument in the funding line “Research and Innovation