Mouse Hunt: Lab Races To Grow Mice For COVID-19 Research

"Laboratories across the world are gearing up to develop vaccines that can stop the spread of the deadly coronavirus. They've got the funding; they've got the talent. But they don't have the mice."

"In order to test and ensure that vaccines are safe and effective, researchers typically conduct experiments on animals, usually mice. Though some labs are experimenting with ferrets and monkeys for this virus, mice are cheap and plentiful."

"But researchers can't use ordinary mice. That's because the coronavirus doesn't make mice sick. Humans have to genetically engineer them to be susceptible to the virus. But it seems there are no such mice to be found."

"The problem is that the genetically altered mice that researchers need have been on ice for the past few years, says Cat Lutz, senior director of the Jackson Laboratory Mouse Repository in Bar Harbor, Maine."

"It's not feasible to keep the thousands of varieties of engineered mice alive in cages, so instead, mice sperm and embryos are kept frozen in cryopreservation tanks. Lutz says it's similar to what you'd find in a human in vitro fertilization clinic."