On December 11, 2021, the famous academic journal “Current Opinion in Virology” published online a review article with the title of “Immune responses to human respiratory coronaviruses infection in mouse models”. Professor Zhao Jincun is the corresponding author of the paper, and Dr. Zhuang Zhen, Dr. Liu Donglan, Professor Sun Jing and Dr. Li Fang of the SKRLD are the co-first authors of the paper.

The pandemic of SARS-CoV-2 has caused more than 200 million infections and claimed over 5 million lives worldwide. At present, the confirmed cases of Covid-19 patients still keep increasing. So far, seven kinds of Coronavirus have been discovered that can cause infection to human respiratory tract, including SARS-CoV-2. According to the level of pathogenicity, these virus can be classified into highly pathogenic Coronavirus (including SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, SARS-CoV-2) and low pathogenic Coronavirus (including HCoV-HKU1, HCoV-OC43, HCoV-NL63, HCoV-229E). The inter-species transmission of Coronavirus has caused a serious threat to the people’s life, health and property safety. In the resistance to Coronavirus infections, the immune response of human body is vital. However, it can also be a double-blade sword. Therefore, analyzing the pathogenic mechanism of Coronavirus, the immune response and regulating mechanism of human body against the virus is vital to the research and development of therapeutic drugs and vaccines against the Coronavirus. The animal model is a key tool for analyzing the pathogenic mechanism of virus, stating the immune response and regulation and evaluating the therapeutic effects of vaccines and drugs. This review has summarized the existing mouse models used in the research of Coronavirus, detailed the natural immune, body liquid immune and cell immune responses induced by the Coronavirus in mouse models and further explored the inspiration of key issues in the research of Coronavirus for the research of Covid-19.

Original paper：https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1879625721001565