Online Therapeutic Area Web Pages and Forum Coming Soon

JAX® NOTES Issue 509, Spring 2008

Sharing ideas, discussing research problems or successes and developing collaborative insights - these are some of the goals for a new communications medium on The Jackson Laboratory's Web site - an interactive Therapeutic Area Discussion Forum. Coming later this spring, this new forum encourages researchers to communicate with colleagues by sharing their experiences using JAX® Mice in disease research.

The first topic of this new Discussion Forum focuses on a promising Jackson Laboratory immunodeficient mouse model for researching cancer, autoimmune, HIV-AIDS and other infectious diseases. It is the JAX® Mice strain NOD.Cg-Prkdcscid Il2rgtm1Wjl/SzJ (005557), commonly called the "5557 mouse". This model has multiple defects in innate and adaptive immunity (Ishikawa et al. 2005; Shultz et al. 2005). It produces no functional B and T cells (even as it ages), has no natural killer (NK) cell activity, is resistant to lymphoma (a disease that plagues other immunodeficient models), and has a longer lifespan range (allowing researchers to conduct long term research). It develops a functional human immune system following engraftment.

Once the forum is active, joining in the discussion on using the JAX® 5557 mouse will be easy. Potential users will need to register, select a username and password, and agree to terms of usage. You can access registration through the therapeutic information page on the JAX® 5557 mouse.

Future topics for potential discussion include widely used JAX® Mice strains in diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular, cancer, and other disease research. Also, the Therapeutic Area Discussion Forum will update researchers about the latest applications, husbandry practices, genotyping and phenotyping protocols, hot papers and references, health reports, relevant JAX® Services, and FAQs relating to some of our most widely used JAX® Mice models.

References

(Author in bold is a Jackson Laboratory Professor)

Ishikawa F, Yasukawa M, Lyons B, Yoshida S, Miyamoto T, Yoshimoto G, Watanabe T, Akashi K, Shultz LD, Harada M. 2005. Development of functional human blood and immune systems in NOD/SCID/IL2 receptor {gamma} chain null mice. Blood 106:1565-73.

Shultz LD, Lyons BL, Burzenski LM, Gott B, Chen X, Chaleff S, Kotb M, Gillies SD, King M, Mangada J, et al. 2005. Human lymphoid and myeloid cell development in NOD/LtSz-scid IL2R_null mice engrafted with mobilized human hemopoietic stem cells. J Immunol 174:6477-89.