Karreth and his team wanted to develop a more efficient method of creating mice with multiple genetic modifications in melanocytes. Additionally, scientists often make multiple changes in different genes at the same time to determine how multiple genetic alterations affect outcomes, or they may turn genes on or off during predetermined periods of time during the mouse’s life to assess how time-dependent alterations impact disease and drug treatments.ĭespite the knowledge gained from mouse models, “creating mouse alleles and breeding multi-allelic melanoma-prone experimental mice is expensive, slow, and cumbersome, rendering conventional mouse modeling an inefficient method to study gene functions in vivo,” explained Florian Karreth, Ph.D., assistant member of the Department of Molecular Oncology at Moffitt. Scientists can add or delete genes (alleles) from particular types of cells in mice, such as melanocytes in the skin, with tissue-specific DNA-targeting approaches. Mouse models have enabled numerous advances in our understanding of cancer and potential treatment approaches.

Their work was published in Cancer Research. Moffitt Cancer Center researchers have developed a new platform for creating genetically engineered mice to study melanoma that is significantly faster than a normal mouse model approach. The process of creating these genetically modified mice is extremely time consuming and expensive, which limits the ability of scientists to use their models to perform important research. – Genetically engineered mouse models are often used by scientists to study how the addition, deletion or mutation of genes affects the development of disease and effects of drugs.

Mouse miles resident