Some ugly mice :eek:

Viremia said:
yes, I work for a drug company

they are naked because that was something that just happened while trying to create a mouse without an immune system

they're used for implantation of cells that a normal mouse would reject. For example, I will be injecting these mice with human prostate cancer cells under the skin and testing a new drug we're working on to see if it works in an animal model.


i.e. you sold out to the man. :p
 
Viremia said:
I doubt they sell these type mice. They cost $40 each and have to be housed in sterile environments because they have no immune system. You can usually only find them from companies that sell to companies and universities for research.

You can buy pinkies (baby mice and rats) but those will grow hair. These won't as they're already young adults.
They're just called hairless rats. Possibly just a different breed.
 
ieholly said:
i.e. you sold out to the man. :p
and I can't say I regret for one moment leaving academia

if I'd played the game a little better and spent another 5 years as a fellow, perhaps I'd have gotten a professorship, but the politics and backstabbing would never be worth the "freedom" of academic research

:)
 
Viremia said:
and I can't say I regret for one moment leaving academia

if I'd played the game a little better and spent another 5 years as a fellow, perhaps I'd have gotten a professorship, but the politics and backstabbing would never be worth the "freedom" of academic research

:)

lol. i would love to be a prof!
 
April23 said:
They're just called hairless rats. Possibly just a different breed.
these mice are definitely different from ANYTHING you'd find in a pet store. I doubt anyone would want to pay $40/mouse and have the thing die in a week because it had no immune system

BTW, their technical name is athymic BALB/c nu/nu mice
 
does it make you sad to use animals? i would rather work with bacteria or yeast or something that doesn't have a face.
 
ieholly said:
lol. i would love to be a prof!
the shit you have to put up with these days just isn't worth it

it's publish or die and funding or die on top of kissing your chairman's ass and avoiding asswipes stabbing you in the back

academia's been changing quickly in the past decade that I've been around it but has been on this trend for the better part of 20 years

quite a few professors I know have gotten the hell out of dodge, even when the pharmaceutical business is in such a rotten place financially

I wish it were different. When I started grad school, I wanted nothing more than to be a prof, but then I looked around and realized it wasn't what I thought it would be.
 
ieholly said:
does it make you sad to use animals? i would rather work with bacteria or yeast or something that doesn't have a face.
I don't know any scientist that WANTS to work with animals. I spent quite a few years working in vet clinics and to this day I love animals. I would rather never to have to do anything research-related to them. However, there's simply no substitute for an animal model.

If you want to know if you in vitro experiments actually work in a whole system with lots of different cell types, hormones, cell-cell interactions, you simply have to use an animal model. I've been using mice and rats for years.

I hate working with rats most of all, because they seem far more sensient than the mice. I will NOT work with dogs or primates though.