Tamoxifen Injections for Inducible Knockouts

SOP

• Safety and Animal Training
• SOP - Needle Capping
• SOP- Tamoxifen

METHODS

• Make up the tamoxifen in corn oil at 10mg/mL (100 mg in 10mL corn oil)-- must wear nitrile gloves when dealing with tamoxifen.
  • Tamoxifen takes a long time to go into solution so plan to prepare ahead of time.
• 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 bottom portion of the actual 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!