Services offered

In vivo protocol design and implementation

Agents alone or in combination will be evaluated in vivo in human tumor xenografts in mice, as well as in GEMs obtained from commercial or institutional vendors or in-house acquisition when requested. We will evaluate each drug or combination of drugs by different routes or different schedules of administration following preliminary toxicology to determine the tolerance of mice to the agent(s).

The in vivo services provided include:

• Advisory consultation with the director of the facility to plan the study to be conducted
• Acquisition of GEM models and/or other in vivo model systems from commercial or institutional vendors when requested
• Generation of experimental cohorts of mice (breeding, tagging, tailing, DNA extraction, and PCR genotyping)
• Establishment of human tumor xenografts in immunodeficient mice as appropriate
• Drug administration by oral gavage and IP, SC, or IV injection
• Surgical procedures (i.e. mouse castration)
• Interface with the appropriate in vivo imaging facility
• Tissues collection: tissue harvest/dissection, tissue pre-processing
• Provide reports of data accrued during each study

In vitro drug target validation

• Target validation of agents or combinations of agents in cell culture in one or more murine and human tumor cell lines or mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs) of various genotypes
• Use of several different assays to test treatment outcomes depending upon the agent and type of information sought (growth curve, apoptosis, senescence, autophagy)
• Availability of an extremely large number of genetically modified primary MEFs lines and human tumor cell lines in our frozen repository

Pricing

Core services are available, as a fee-for-service function, to DF/HCC members, Harvard-affiliated investigators, and all other scientific investigators. Pricing is based on the need of the project.