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saganmypants t1_j4craod wrote

Reply to comment by wakka55 in How are animals given specific types of cancer for the purpose of medical experimentation? by InZerSchtinker

You probably could do any old street mouse but there are companies who produce litter after litter of genetic cloned mice so that your results are consistent and not dependent upon genetic variation. There are different mouse models, but in many cases the mice have compromised or differently engineered immune systems to mitigate immune system interference.

Typical experiments use mouse cancer cell lines so if injected into a human it would be rejected by your immune system, but there are some models of mice with humanized immune systems which are capable of acquiring human cell tumors and those cells could theoretically be transplanted into people. Usually no hazmat suits AFAIK, just typical gloves and lab coat. I am merely a synthetic organic chemist so I don't know much more detail beyond that but have learned enough about it through colleagues who go on to test the things we make

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research_guy17 t1_j4cvxlz wrote

You could attempt "any mouse off the street", but primarily tumor xenograph models are established in SCID mice, bred and cloned for the function. SCID means they are immune deficient, otherwise the immune system of the regular mouse would likely generate antibodies to the injected cells and either reject the attempt to grow the tumor or result in poor health or even death of the "regular" mouse.

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