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davidmartin1357 t1_ita1mgr wrote

Probably a common question but do they give the mice cancer?

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cultureicon t1_ita81l1 wrote

Looks like they can inject them with a number of chemicals, or use genetic engineering:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6995380/

Rat: Wistar and Lewis rats are injected intraperitoneally with azaserine to induce acinar cell carcinoma of the pancreas, with liver, lung and lymph node metastasis 6, 7. However, the lesions in this model lack a typical duct-like structure and of ten occur alongside tumors of other organs (mammary, liver, kidney). The chemicals 4-hydroxyaminoquinoline-1-oxide 8, nafenopin 9, clofibrate 10, N -(N-methyl-N-nitrosamide)-L-ornithine 11 and different N-nitro compounds 7 can induce acinar cell lesions without a duct-like structure. Vesselinovitch et al. found that topical benzopyrene can induce adenocarcinoma in rats. They implanted dimethylbenzanthracene crystal powder into the pancreas of Sprague-Dawley rats, and approximately 80% of them developed spindle cell sarcoma and poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma. Other researchers using this method have found ductal cell proliferation, tubular adenocarcinoma, acinic cell carcinoma, fibrosarcoma, and invasive ductal adenocarcinoma.

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Bobdolezholez t1_itam9k0 wrote

Do studies ever focus on those 20% of mice that don’t develop cancers after injections and why that might be?

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1-trofi-1 t1_itb1dhh wrote

Yes this is what they do. Each method has its own advantages and disadvantages regarding how representative it is to human disease

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kharlos t1_ita7dmu wrote

All rats pretty much die of cancer, iirc, if you just wait 2-3 years. But yeah, I wonder if they expose them to something that increases the likelihood of specific cancers.

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soonami t1_itaafv7 wrote

They will also sometimes implant tumor cells, which is called a xenograph

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