The TSC Preclinical Consortium is currently running three animal models, one of which is the Tsc2+/- A/J strain (Woodrum et al 2010, Guo and Kwiatkowski 2013).
A/J mice are challenging to breed, but the Preclinical Consortium’s colony at the Van Andel Research Institute is now in very good shape. Large cohorts of age-matched mice are bred for testing candidate drugs using standardized protocols at a contract research organization. However, as a by-product of growing the colony, we have smaller numbers of non-age-matched mice, which could provide valuable data for other research questions.
We currently have available 31 female Tsc2+/- A/J mice with dates of birth ranging from January 3, 2018, through February 23, 2018. The TSC Alliance is inviting proposals for experiments to use this set of Tsc2+/- A/J mice by researchers in the United States who have funding and laboratory facilities to implement the proposed research.
Mice will be shipped to the selected researcher(s) in the United States at no charge. (Shipping outside the United States would be cost-prohibitive.) All breeding and shipping charges will be paid by the TSC Alliance. In return, TSC Alliance requires that data generated using this set of mice be shared, after time to allow for publication or intellectual property protection, with the TSC Alliance and TSC Preclinical Consortium.
Proposals will be accepted until 5 p.m. Eastern Time on Friday, May 4. Time extensions will not be allowed. Although this is short notice, the purpose of these proposals is to utilize the mice for one or more well-defined experiments for which funding exists, so the effort to submit a proposal should be low.
Please refer to this document for additional criteria and details on the process.
Questions and proposals should be emailed to Calvin Ho and Steve Roberds at cho@tscalliance.org and sroberds@tscalliance.org.