We recently developed a novel brain cancer model in the inbred VM mouse strain that shares several characteristics with human GBM.
We used transmission studies with wild-type mice to define the strain characteristics of geographically distinct cases of vCJD to establish whether a common strain of agent is responsible for vCJD cases from 5 different countries.
We recently described two new mouse models of systemic metastatic cancer in the inbred VM mouse strain that express multiple myeloid/macrophages characteristics to include phagocytosis, morphological appearance, and gene and lipid expression [ 14, 28, 185].
Further details regarding general phenotypic characteristics of each mouse strain can be obtained from the Mouse Phenome Database (MPD) [56] and a convenient webpage with MPD links for each of the 12 mouse strains considered in our analysis is available (see: http://phenome.jax.org/db/q?rtn=projects/strainlist&projsym=GX-Shockley1).
This makes them very useful in linkage studies searching for the genetic variants responsible for the interesting characteristics of this mouse strain (Dejager et al, 2009).
The nonobese diabetic (NOD) mouse strain exhibits immunological, histopathological and physiological characteristics of SS with focal mononuclear cell infiltration of the exocrine glands from approximately 8 weeks of age [ 7].
Differences in baseline airway hyper-reactivity can be an intrinsic characteristic of the mouse strain.
Characteristics of the AKB6F1 mouse strain make it suitable as an assay animal for quantitating haemopoietic stem cells, or spleen colony-forming units (CFU-S), from leukaemic AKR mice.
Runx3Cre mice crossed onto the R26-stopFlox-LacZ or R26-stopFlox-tdTomato reporter mouse strains, exhibited the characteristic Runx3 expression pattern with no expression in the GIT, whereas, when crossed onto the general deleter strain Pgk-Cre, the R26-stopFlox-LacZ or R26-stopFlox-tdTomato displayed ubiquitous blue staining or red fluorescence, respectively, including strong staining in the GIT.
The NZM2410 mouse strain develops spontaneous lupus nephritis that shares a number of characteristics with human SLE [ 21].
