Female nmri mice

All mice experiments were carried out in accordance with German legislation on animal welfare. Female NMRI mice (6–8 weeks) were obtained from Janvier Laboratories. For planar imaging, mice were anesthetized with Isoflurane (Baxter) and ¹¹¹In labeled nanoparticles with a total activity of 8–10 MBq (corresponding to 100 µL) were intravenously injected into the tail vein. Afterwards, the animals were placed in prone position (see Figure 5—figure supplements 2A and 3A) on a planar gamma-imager (Biospace) equipped with a high energy collimator as described previously (Müller et al., 2013 (link); Wischnjow et al., 2016 (link)). Images were recorded at the indicated time points with 10 min acquisition time.

Female NMRI mice, 8-week old, were purchased from Janvier Labs (France). To assess the acute toxicity of test-compounds, mice were challenged either a) by a single intratracheal instillation or b) by three instillations on days 1, 3 and 6 of Fab’, PEG40–Fab’ or PEG40 (200 μg or 4.2 nmol/25 μl per administration, n = 8). In the placebo group, mice were treated intratracheally with PBS. Mice were sacrificed by cervical dislocation a) 24 and 72 h after the single dose instillation or b) 24 h and 7 days after the last treatment.

Subjects were male R6/1 (B6.Cg-Tg (HDexon1) 61Gpb/J, Stock number: 006471, Jackson Laboratory, Main Harbor, NY, USA) and age-matched wild-type (WT) littermates [16 (link)] which were bred and genotyped as previously described [17 (link),18 (link)]. While the CAG repeat size was not determined for the mice used in this experiment, the number in the breeders was 123.64 ± 0.89. Mice weaned at 21 days of age were group-housed with their same-sex littermates (3–5/cage) until the beginning of experiments. NMRI female mice (Janvier, Le Genest-Saint-Isle, France) of 3–4 months of age were used as stimulus animals in the social tests. Each stimulus animal was used 3–4 times in the same experiment; its use and order of presentation was always balanced across genotypes. All animals were housed in unisexual groups (3–5 per cage) in polycarbonate standard cages (33x15x14 cm in size; Tecniplast, Limonest, France), provided with sawdust bedding (SAFE, Augy, France), and a stainless steel wire lid. Food chow (SAFE, Augy, France) and water were provided ad libitum. The animals were maintained in separate male and female identical colony rooms under temperature (22°C) and humidity-controlled (55%) conditions with a 12:12 hr light—dark cycle (lights on at 7 a.m.).