CPTC Reagents Data Portal

Mouse Reagents

The NCI Mouse Proteomic Technologies Initiative, a component of NCI's Clinical Proteomic Technologies Initiative for Cancer, was designed to use animal models to develop and standardize technologies that help improve the accurate measurement of proteins and peptides linked to cancer processes. Launched in 2004, the program reflects a multidisciplinary and collaborative team approach to the development of standard tools and resources needed to accelerate protein biomarker discovery.

Mouse models of human cancer offer many distinct opportunities to optimize procedures for profiling major human cancers. The mouse serves as an in vivo model for cancer development that resembles the human model more closely than do cell lines and tissue samples. Mouse cells pass through many of the same physiological processes as human cells (such as apoptosis, angiogenesis, metastasis) during tumorogenesis. Researchers have previously elucidated many molecular pathways and frameworks of disease processes in mice, providing a framework that allows investigators to control many variables that could affect protein expression. By using the mouse model, researchers also gain the advantage of directly comparing aberrant protein levels measured in the mouse's cancer and surrounding tissues with those in the serum or plasma.

The NCI biorepository of the Mouse Proteomics Technology Initiative exists to provide United States investigators with a resource of biospecimens from mouse models of cancer from a variety of cancer sites. Both plasma and tissue samples from these models were analyzed by proteomics labs at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, the Institute for Systems Biology, and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Plasma and tissue samples from 10 mouse models of cancer are available. References describing the methods and results of the generation and characterization of the mouse models are forthcoming. Because this is a finite resource, the NCI may not be able to satisfy all requests for samples.

• Access to Mouse Reagents