Figure 9.
The effect of 16D11 hu-mAb in PR8 lethally-infected DRAGA mice. (A) Body-weights of naïve (non-infected) DRAGA mice and PR8 lethally-infected (LD100) DRAGA mice with and without 16D11 hu-mAb treatment. A single i.p. injection of 600 μg per mouse (n = 3-4 mice /group) was administered at the time of infection. Mice were monitored every other 3rd or 4th dpi. Brown star indicates the most resilient mouse in the treatment group. (B) Survival rates for groups of DRAGA mice described in panel A. Of note, the most resilient DRAGA mouse in the PR8-infected/treated group showed 40% less loss in body-weight at day 43 post-infection when was sacrificed for analysis, which is a significantly when compared with the average loss in body-weight for the control infection group (p = 0.026 according to Mantel-Cox test, and p = 0.016 according to pairwise curves comparisons of Gehan-Breslow-Wilcoxon test). (C) Lung analysis of DRAGA mice described in panel A. Upper panels, lungs and Hematoxilin-Eosin (HE) staining of lung sections from a representative naïve DRAGA mouse; Middle panels, lungs and HE staining of lung sections from the most resilient DRAGA mouse to PR8 lethal infection upon 16D11 hu-mAb treatment as analyzed 40 days post-infection. Shown is a mild lung damage in the lower lobe of the right lung (diffuse grayish area) with slightly distorted alveolar architecture and scattered lymphocyte infiltrates (yellow arrow); Lower panels, lungs and HE staining of lung sections from a representative PR8-lethally DRAGA mouse left untreated, and analyzed 20 days post-infection. Shown is massive pneumonia in both lungs (dark reddish areas) with heavily distorted alveolar architecture, and interstitial and intra-alveolar lymphocyte infiltration.