About Us

This facility was established with an R24 grant ("Center for Humanized Mice"  R24OD018546) from the Office of the Director of the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Santhi Gorantla

Santhi Gorantla, PhD

Co-Director
Associate Professor, Pharmacology & Experimental Neuroscience
402-559-8754
email

Faculty Bio

Dr. Larisa Poluektova

Larisa Poluektova, PhD

Co-Director
Professor, Pharmacology & Experimental Neuroscience
402-559-5880
email

Faculty Bio

At UNMC Drs. Larisa Poluektova and Santhi Gorantla have been working on humanized mice for past 12 years and pioneered novel humanized mouse model with functional human immune system for the studies of NeuroAIDS and with human liver for HIV-1 and HCV co-infections (published work).

Their expertise in this mouse model ensued in procuring an R24 NIH grant to further genetically modify NSG strain, with the help of Dr. Channabasavaiah Gurumurthy (Director of Mouse genomics), to improve the accommodation of human immune system in mice for vaccine development and to include human drug metabolizing enzymes in NSG mice for drug interaction studies.