Description:
The invention is a STAT5 mutant mouse that can be used in research related to cancer, autoimmunity and infectious diseases as well as drug screening. The mouse model itself has multiple immunological defects resulting in formation of STAT5 dimers but not tetramers.
It reports that only a minority of IL-2-modulated genes is regulated by STAT5 tetramers. Therefore, selectively targeting tetramer formation might be a relatively specific therapeutic tool wherein one could modulate only part of the actions of a cytokine or growth factor, which allows a new therapeutic approach to modulating immune responses, controlling inflammation, and inhibiting tumor growth.
The STAT5 tetramer deficient mouse is an ideal tool to screen for tetramerization inhibitors that can be used for the treatment of cancer, autoimmunity and inflammation in addition to the basic research applications.