I'd love for somebody to explain how you get a group of brain tumor-bearing mice. Can one somehow prompt glioblastoma to occur in some meaningful percentage of mice? I scanned the paper but found nothing.
Want skin cancer? Rub a known causing carcinogen on a patch of skin daily, want brain cancer? Probably injections or controlled exposure to radiation.
There is also a process of transplanting cancer cells (including from humans) into hosts to grow tumors.
Lastly these days there is also mutagenesis (usually gene knockout) in embryos and selective breeding and engineering for predisposition to cancer both general and of specific types.
Overall it's likely a mixture of several methods depending on the exact requirements; breeding mice which are predisposed to cancer by knocking out genes that are known to suppress cancer or help the immune system effectively battle it and then cellular transplant or carcinogenic exposure to cause tumors in specific locations or specific types of cancer.
Yes, mice are bread and engineered with suppressed immune systems and other traits.
There are specific breeds of mice for specific experiments while they aren't technically clones their genetic profile is very specific and their genetic diversity is very reduced.
When you buy mice for research you get a very specific genetic profile many labs today will customize it also for your needs lab mice and rats are not pet store animals.
This goes beyond simply knocking out genes for example transgenic mice and other experimental animals are engineered with human genes that can for example add cellular recptors that do not occur in those animals naturally to test anti virals, vaccines and other drugs.
Not a stupid question. Nude mice are one way of doing this, though without an immune system to interact with a tumor, results need confirmation in other model types.
Yep, we have all sorts of crazy, messed up mice that are used for biomedical research. Humanized mice[1] typically have genes knocked out that code for some essential aspect of the immune system. With important genes being made non-functional, the mice end up being immunodeficient.
