New T.O. Mouse House Key to Research Rat Race
First centre of its kind in Canada Rodent study key to human health

Elaine Carey, Medical Reporter

It will be Canada's finest mouse house, designed to give the world a map for human health.

Construction of the $67 million, 120,000-square-foot building will begin soon on Orde St. across from Mount Sinai Hospital. It is to be a state-of-the-art research facility for genetically altered mice.

It will house special laboratories with space for up to 36,000 cages to house 180,000 mice.

"You still have to go from mice back to humans and vice versa — it's always back and forth — but it's become the proven model for studying the human genome," said Janet Rossant, CEO of the mouse centre.

The mouse was the second mammal after humans to have its full DNA sequence or genome revealed and because it proved so similar to the human one, it has become increasingly important in tracking the links between genetics and human disease.

The centre will also allow researchers to share their knowledge with the global scientific community, Rossant said.

"Up until now, the investigation of mouse models has been dispersed across the city and often incomplete because we didn't have the facility to investigate them," she said.Six medical schools and hospitals in New York City, led by Columbia and Rockefeller Universities, plan to build a shared mouse house — a 25,000-cage building costing about $15 million.

Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore opened a $35 million mouse house last October.

In the Toronto centre, robots will empty and clean the mouse cages, although trained technicians will be checking the mice's health every day.

The mouse house — officially called the Toronto Centre for Phenogenomics — is a joint venture of Toronto's four downtown teaching hospitals, Mount Sinai, Sick Children's, the University Health Network and St. Michael's, and is set to open by the end of next year.

It's part of the MARS Discovery District, bounded by Bloor St., Spadina Ave., Dundas and Bay Sts., designated by the city to promote the area as one of the top centres of biomedical research in the world.

The centre, the first of its kind in Canada and one of only a few in the world, will be "one-stop shopping for mouse genetics," said Rossant, a senior investigator at Mount Sinai's Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute.

For a lot of diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease and cancers, "we don't really know what gene is involved," Rossant said.

"In that case, we can make mice with random alterations in their genome and take all of them and say `which of these has the disease.'

"We can start with the gene or start with the symptoms and pull those two things together along the way."

The rat has now also had its genome uncovered but "the rat is big. You can't keep many and it becomes expensive," she said.

"Really, there's no other species than the mouse that you can use for that range of genetic activity."

The centre will be making specialized research mice, as well as sperm, ovaries, embryos and tissue DNA available to researchers, biotech and pharmaceutical companies across Canada at cost, through the Canadian Mouse Mutant Repository.

The Mouse Imaging Centre, already in operation, which can do the latest state-of-the-art magnetic imaging on 16 mice at once, will be "the highlight of the services we can provide for research," Rossant said.

"The most important thing we have is that, as well as generating, holding and distributing mice, is the capacity to look at the cell biology of those mice.

"What you have to be able to do is the same kind of tests on a mouse as a human. If we say what's wrong with this genetically altered mouse, we can give it ultrasound, take its blood pressure and heart rate."

The mice will be strictly controlled so they have no chance of catching outside diseases or infections.

Provincial and federal inspectors will check on the holding facilities and the federal Canadian Council for Animal Care has to approve the protocol for every mouse experiment performed.

"The engineering in this building is really quite amazing," Rossant said.

"People should understand these mice are being housed in conditions that are really first class — for their benefit and also for understanding what's going on in mice."

While robots will clean the cages, people will move the mice from one cage to another, she said.

"It's very important that people handle the mice," Rossant said.

"They're the ones who will look at them every day and recognize if a mouse doesn't look quite right. That's key to being able to get the most out of these animals.

"The architects of the building had to ensure that it was secure enough that the mice could not escape. The public will not have any access to the mice and only trained technicians will be allowed to handle them."

The centre provides a great chance for the four hospitals to work together and all of them are extremely supportive of the initiative, Rossant said.