Services

Animal resources

Supporting research studies by providing the highest standards of animal care leading to improved reproducibility.

Animal use protocol development and ethics approval
Veterinary oversight and compliance support
Animal handling and technical training
Custom mouse breeding, weaning and colony expansion
Technical services (including sample collection, drug administration and surgery)

Lab technician wearing gown, gloves, hair net and mask working at a biosafety cabinet

Model production

Providing genetically engineered mice for investigating gene function and testing therapeutic intervention.

Allele design and vector construction for targeting and transgenics
Production and quality control of mouse mutant lines using Cas9, embryonic stem (ES) cells or transgenics
Gene targeting and quality control in mouse ES cells
Generation of chimeras (including tetraploid complementation assay)
Derivation of new mouse ES cells and embryonic fibroblasts
Colony management and genotyping for research cohort production

Clinical phenotyping

Identifying clinical phenotypes of mouse models of human disease using internationally standardized in vivo tests.

Custom in-life phenotyping across major physiological and neurological systems
Morphology assessment and sensory testing (thermal, mechanical, olfactory, auditory, visual)
Organ function (including heart, kidney, blood, musculoskeletal)
Neurobehaviour analysis for learning and memory, trait anxiety, depression, social behaviour
Preclinical testing of treatments with clinical phenotyping

Lab technician using an echocardiography machine

Lab technician looking at mouse brain MRI images on a computer screen.

Imaging

Discovering complex morphological and developmental phenotypes that lead to new hypotheses about disease mechanisms.

High throughput 3D imaging to study mouse embryo and adult anatomy
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), X-ray microcomputed tomography (µCT), high frequency ultrasonography, optical projection tomography and serial two-photon fluorescence microscopy
Image analysis, image visualization and 3D mouse atlases

Pathology

Identifying histological changes associated with disease and therapeutic interventions.

Gross pathology (including whole body necropsy or organ-specific dissection)
Clinical chemistry with blood collection and analysis of up to 18 analytes
Histology with fixed or frozen tissue processing and sectioning, routine or special staining
Immunohistochemistry with automated high throughput single and multiplex fluorescence
Digital pathology with whole slide imaging and quantitative image analysis
Histopathology for research interpretation and evaluation

Pathology lab technician looking through a microscope

Lab technician pulling out a cryopreserved sperm straws from a liquid nitrogen tank

Archiving & distribution

Securing and distributing valuable mouse resources to promote research reproducibility, collaboration and impact.

Sperm and embryo cryopreservation for long-term storage and biosecurity
Sperm and embryo cryorecovery to re-establish lines from cryopreserved stock
Rederivation or rescue of mouse strains into specific pathogen-free status
Distribution of cryopreserved or recovered lines

View catalog of publicly available lines

Service partners

TCP collaborates with multiple research service providers to ensure our clients have access to cutting-edge technologies across domains for their research projects

Infection studies with bacteria, viruses, parasites, and fungi in CL2 and CL3 as well as inflammatory models are supported by our collaborators at the McGill Infection and Inflammation Platform.
Proteomics and metabolomics studies, including several quantitative mouse tissue proteomics assays developed in collaboration with TCP, can be executed at the Proteomics Centre at the University of Victoria.
Sanger and next generation sequencing for quality control of animal models are conducted at The Centre for Applied Genomics.

Funding partners

Work with us

We are a national facility, producing and phenotyping mouse models for discovery and biomedical research.