# Generation of a ‘humanized’ CD28 mouse for in vivo studies of role of costimulation during Th17 development

> **NIH NIH R03** · UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH AT PITTSBURGH · 2020 · $77,798

## Abstract

CD28 costimulation is a central tenet of T cell activation and tolerance, yet the mechanisms by which CD28
functions are still surprisingly poorly understood and even controversial. Our data and others indicate clear
differences in qualitative outcome of CD28 signaling between mouse and human CD4+ T cells, with human
CD28 appearing to mediate enhanced downstream signaling and associated functional outcomes compared to
murine CD28. Furthermore, we have recently demonstrated that human Th17 differentiation is strongly
inhibited by CD28 costimulation, while mouse Th17 cell differentiation is unaffected. These species differences
in CD28 responses create a problem in interpreting and studying the role of costimulation during Th17
development in vivo in our mouse models of autoimmunity. In a wider context of therapies that target T cells,
such as cancer immunotherapy, these inter-species differences in CD28 signaling create concern when
extrapolating mouse model findings to clinical trials. This was most clearly demonstrated by a disastrous
CD28-superagonist clinical trial which induced near-lethal cytokine storm in healthy Phase I volunteers, despite
mouse models indicating expansion of regulatory T cells with minimal cytokine induction. Mouse models of
human disease provide critical and sophisticated in vivo mechanistic platforms and pre-clinical drug efficacy
testing that are generally not possible with human samples. There is therefore a critical need to optimize these
models so that they better reflect human pathways. The C-terminal proline-rich domain of CD28 is known to be
one of two critical signaling motifs in the relatively short CD28 cytoplasmic tail. It was recently demonstrated
that mouse and human CD28 differ in this domain by a single amino acid, PYAP in mouse, PYPP in human,
and substituting A->P in mouse CD28 enhanced recruitment of signaling adaptors and downstream cytokine
production, recapitulating the response of human CD28 ligation. We therefore propose to generate a mouse
that bears `humanized' CD28PYPP using CRISPR/Cas9 to generate a single point mutation in the proline
domain. Importantly, the rest of the CD28 molecule will be murine, meaning that physiological levels of
expression and engagement of costimulatly ligands B7-1/B7-2 will occur. We hypothesize that this CD28PYPP
mouse strain will recapitulate our findings in human Th17 cells by demonstrating CD28-mediated suppression
of Th17 responses. We will test this hypothesis and validate our model using ex vivo analysis of peripheral T
cell development and CD28 signaling, coupled with initial in vitro and in vivo Th17 differentiation assays. This
proposal will thus provide a novel validated tool with which to interrogate the role of CD28 costimulation in
Th17 differentiation under various in vivo circumstances (inflammatory and homeostatic). This tool will not only
enable our own Th17-focused studies, the humanized CD28PYPP mouse has the potential to significantly
advance al...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9848497
- **Project number:** 5R03AI144229-02
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH AT PITTSBURGH
- **Principal Investigator:** Mandy J McGeachy
- **Activity code:** R03 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $77,798
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-01-09 → 2020-12-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9848497

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9848497, Generation of a ‘humanized’ CD28 mouse for in vivo studies of role of costimulation during Th17 development (5R03AI144229-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9848497. Licensed CC0.

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