Tamoxifen Injections for Inducible Knockouts
- Make up the tamoxifen in corn oil at 10mg/mL (100 mg in 10mL corn oil)-- must wear nitrile gloves when dealing with tamoxifen.
- Inject 50 mg/kg on five consecutive days, at the same time each day. The time is important, otherwise they will overdose if you inject too close together.
- To determine how much to inject weigh the mouse and inject 5 uL/g of mouse. This means a 25 g mouse will get an injection of 125 uL.
- Give yourself plenty of time to fill needles because the corn oil takes a long time to aspirate--watch for bubbles.
- Tamoxifen can be stored at room temperature for up to a week.
- The initial weights can be used for the rest of the week when determining injection volume, unless there is reason to believe they will be changing drastically.
- Notes about transferring mice:
- Mice must be transferred to the biocontainment room during injections and for an additional 72 hrs post final injection.
- The husbandry staff need to know a few days prior to transfer so they can have the room ready for occupancy (i.e. everything stocked and agent filled), for this email sanderjo@med.umich.edu to tell him when and how many cages you you plan to transfer.
- If you are introducing a new chemical or biological hazard, they need to be made aware of this.
- There are special barcodes for this room so you must change them out when you transfer in and then again change them to the regular ones when transferring back out.
- Remember to mark the cage with the appropriate sticker (biological or chemical hazard) and place appropriate acetate with required information (name of agent, dates of administration, and dose)---if you are treating the water with a drug the bottle must be marked was well.
- Make sure to provide animals with food and water.
- Additional PPE is required and highly monitored in this area, make sure to abide with these regulations!