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wakka55 t1_j4clgwr wrote

Reply to comment by saganmypants in How are animals given specific types of cancer for the purpose of medical experimentation? by InZerSchtinker

Can you inject any mouse off the street and give it the cancer? Or are these special genetically matching mice that don't reject the injection immediately as a foreign invader?

What if you inject a human with it? Do the researchers need hazmat suits to handle these mice?

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saganmypants t1_j4craod wrote

You probably could do any old street mouse but there are companies who produce litter after litter of genetic cloned mice so that your results are consistent and not dependent upon genetic variation. There are different mouse models, but in many cases the mice have compromised or differently engineered immune systems to mitigate immune system interference.

Typical experiments use mouse cancer cell lines so if injected into a human it would be rejected by your immune system, but there are some models of mice with humanized immune systems which are capable of acquiring human cell tumors and those cells could theoretically be transplanted into people. Usually no hazmat suits AFAIK, just typical gloves and lab coat. I am merely a synthetic organic chemist so I don't know much more detail beyond that but have learned enough about it through colleagues who go on to test the things we make

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research_guy17 t1_j4cvxlz wrote

You could attempt "any mouse off the street", but primarily tumor xenograph models are established in SCID mice, bred and cloned for the function. SCID means they are immune deficient, otherwise the immune system of the regular mouse would likely generate antibodies to the injected cells and either reject the attempt to grow the tumor or result in poor health or even death of the "regular" mouse.

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captaincumsock69 t1_j4e5hrs wrote

They use mice that are either purchased or bred for the research. They might use genetic knockout mice or just wild type depends on the project. Presumably if you injected a juman with it a tumor would grow but this is not allowed in most countries

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Tasty-Fox9030 t1_j4ffbog wrote

This sounds so cartoonishly evil that it's difficult to believe, but people have actually been deliberately injected with human cancer cells and they generally do NOT get established.

Horrible but true:

Tuskegee syphilis study not America's only medical scandal https://aquila.usm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1242&context=ojhe

In general it's going to be ok because a healthy immune system is going to recognize the cells as foreign. The problem with getting cancer for the most part is that they ARE your cells. (Ideally your body recognizes your own cancer cells anyway but you get the idea.) If you're immunosuppressed for whatever reason it's possible.

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