In vivo experiments

Keywords: animal facility, mouse breeding housing, transgenesis, cryopreservation, xenografts, Xenopus breeding housing

The Institut Curie's In vivo Experiments platform accommodates modern animal facilities for the husbandry of mice as well as a Xenopus facility. The housing of animals is performed according to stringent international laws. All experimental procedures and animal housing are performed to the highest standards and in strict accordance with the recommendations of the European Community and the French National Committee for care and use of laboratory animals. All animal experiments are carried out under the supervision of an investigator authorised by the French Competent Veterinary Authority (Direction des Services Vétérinaires). The mission of the platform is to provide a centre for the generation and maintenance of quality animals by skilled and experienced personnel in a controlled environment as a service to the scientific community at the Institut Curie.

Animal experimentation is a necessary part of numerous areas of biological and medical research:

• In basic biological research, observations made in vitro must be validated or extrapolated to the scale of the living organism.
• In fundamental research into diseases, animal models enable experimental studies that are impossible in human subjects.
• In the development of new medicines and treatments for human disease.

More than twenty teams and the Technology Transfer Department at the Institut Curie use animal experiments when no alternative method can be applied to enhance our understanding of how normal and cancer cells function.

The platform consists of several accredited facilities including:

• Two specific-pathogen-free (SPF) facilities that currently breed and maintain 250 mutant lines per year.
• Two quarantine areas that are completely separate from the SPF breeding facilities; all animals obtained from outside can be settled in a quarantine area before cleaning, and many experiments with biological products can be done in these areas.

The high degree of conservation of molecular and anatomic embryonic processes between all vertebrates (including mammals) makes species of the African frog Xenopus ideal for the study of morphogenesis at the molecular level. The Curie Institute's Xenopus facilities provide a state of the art habitat for Xenopus.

During the past 10 years, the animal facilities at the Institut Curie have evolved to provide help to the scientific community of the Institut Curie in producing, using and analysing mutant mice. Our main activity in this regard is to house, produce and distribute stock of the most popular strains of mutant mice. The platform also provides services for the genetic engineering of mice.

Fig.1