ABSTRACT
Animal models are essential in Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) research for the evaluation of vaccine strategies or the screening of antiviral agents. Indeed, transgenic mouse technology already proved a valuable approach to provide new animal models for the study of human viral diseases: transgenic mice susceptible to human viruses or with pathologies related to human viral diseases. Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV) infection of macaques represents the best AIDS model available, as the infected animals suffer from opportunistic infections, wasting, diarrhea and other symptoms associated with AIDS in humans. Wang et al. have thus shown that administration of HIV envelope proteins can induce in vivo a massive deletion of CD4+T cells, suggesting that soluble envelope might be involved in some aspects of AIDS pathogenesis. The transgenic animal technology proved very useful in confirming the direct role of some viral genes in the development of AIDS.
