Rise of Macaque Models for Immunity and Infection Research

Nonhuman primates (NHPs) are crucial for immunity and infectious disease research due to their genetic similarities with humans and identical disease pathogenesis and immune responses against human pathogens. Multiple species of NHPs play a critical role in vaccine research and in understanding the transmission dynamics and disease pathogenesis against several viral infections, including human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV-1), Zika virus, hepatitis virus, and SARS-CoV-2, among others. NHPs are also extensively used as a preclinical model in HIV-1 cure research trials for screening the therapeutic efficacy of shock-and-kill strategies, broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs), therapeutic vaccines, and gene editing technologies to remove HIV proviral DNA from host chromosomes. This chapter covers all these topics with a particular focus on the utility of rhesus macaques in immunity and infection research.