The infamous NIH-trained viral immunologist Kerry Lavender, about whose BLT-L humanized mice project at the University of Saskatchewan I've written extensively, has appeared again in 2022 with more published studies on BLT mice, which are humanized mice engrafted with human fetal bone marrow, liver and thymus.
Since January 1, 2022, Dr. Lavender has published three articles, two of which deal with BLT mice and HIV. She is a BLT mouse expert who, while being trained at the NIH's Rocky Mountain Labs in Hamilton, Montana, developed her own strain of mice for BLT construction. This strain of mice, called the C57BL/6 Rag2-/-γc-/-CD47-/- strain, is distinctive: black with pink ears and tail.
In her 2013 study, she demonstrated that her triple-knockout, bone marrow, liver, thymus (TKO-BLT) humanized mice made with this strain of mice have special immunity to HIV.
On Dr. Lavender's profile page at the University of Saskatchewan, there is a description of the special characteristics of her TKO-BLT mice:
Most importantly, it states that "the mice support sustained HIV-1 infection, mount HIV-1-specific immune responses, have a functional complement system and exhibit the hallmarks of a genuine human HIV-1 infection."
Kerry Lavender specifically mentioned using this strain of mice in her podcast about her BLT-L mouse project at the University of Saskatchewan.
The University of Saskatchewan's June 25, 2020 announcement about Kerry Lavender's BLT-L humanized mouse project showcases Dr. Lavender's unique qualifications:
Lavender’s lab is one of a handful worldwide with the expertise, capacity and authorization to rapidly produce and use BLT-L mice for the study of respiratory pathogens. Each mouse contains two human lung implants that can be infected
by SARS-CoV-2 and a human immune system that will mount an immune response
to the infection.
Since Kerry has been making a continuous supply of hundreds of BLT-L (engrafted with human fetal bone marrow, liver, thymus and lung) mice for COVID-19 research at the University of Saskatchewan, it seems that she had access to plenty of BLT mice for other experiments.
On January 1, 2022, Kerry Lavender and Yunyun Di of the University of Saskatchewan published a protocol on inducing long-term HIV latency in BLT humanized mice in HIV Reservoirs magazine.
Note that they used the TKO-BLT mouse model:
The TKO-BLT humanized mouse model is especially useful for long-term studies
as it is highly resistant to the wasting syndrome and graft-versus-host disease
(GVHD) that can limit the use of other BLT-models.
This study was supported with NIH funding:
Kerry Lavender and Yunyun Din published a second article, with the publication date of March, 2022, in AIDS magazine:
HIV-1-infected TKO-BLT mice engrafted with fetal bone marrow, liver and thymus were treated with an interferon drug.
Unfortunately, the full texts of both articles are behind a pay wall, so it is not possible to find out the source of the fetal organs. I was very much hoping to verify the source of the aborted baby organs since a very large quantity is necessary for the production of the continuous supply of BLT-L mice at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon.
What is significant is that Kerry Lavender has begun publishing BLT mice studies again. It is also very interesting that her TKO-BLT mice are being used in HIV studies, given that HIV has suddenly reappeared in the news with warnings that some coronavirus vaccines could increase susceptibility to HIV.
Given that the testing of coronavirus vaccines is the stated purpose of Dr. Lavender's BLT-L mouse project, her simultaneous experiments with HIV-infected BLT mice is of great interest, particularly that the same TKO-BLT mice models are being used to test pancoronavirus vaccines and also to test HIV-infected mice.
This leads me to wonder why Kerry Lavender and her TKO-BLT mice which are especially suited to support HIV infections were specifically chosen for the COVID-19 pancoronavirus vaccine testing program which involves VIDO-InterVac, an international vaccine testing facility with BSL2, BSL3 and BSL4 labs, the highest biosafety containment level.
I have written here about how the mystifying Saskatoon BLT-L project involves Canada, the US government, the Chinese government, three top US scientists, and aborted baby organs and human/mice chimeras. Now we learn that Dr. Lavender is also conducting experiments on HIV-infected TKO BLT mice. Very mystifying, indeed.