4 Mice died! But Experiment is ON.

It was all fine for the first two days. On the third day I found a female mice dead from the 4 mg group. I took the corpus and dissected it in our department with SK sir. But by the afternoon, it was badly smelling and we could not bear it till we could possibly find its ovaries! And I have no idea where its ovaries were! I got some fat from the omentum about the calculated size of gonad and assumed it as ovary!!

The next day – while taking dissection I got a call – Akka, informed me that another mouse is dead. It was again a female, from the group which received 4mg drug. I discarded the corpus straight away!

The next day – Sunday – after the morning ‘tulu mass session at Milagris’ we entered the animal house taking the name of the god and found a male (8mg group) and a female (4 mg group) dead. I know it is unscientific in any study to discard the corpus without knowing the cause of death.

Since then there are no more casualties.

Today I and BK sacrificed 5 mice (3 male+ 2 female) by simple cervical dislocation. We could identify the ovaries and pancreas which we had difficulties in earlier attempts. I have taken the tissues – testis and ovaries in Bouin’s solution and pancreas and kidney in regular 10% formalin.

The story so far-  all mice were injected with Gemcitabine on 23-11-10.

No. of mice injected with drug	Approximate amount	Mice dead	Date of death	Number of mice sacrificed to be on
				01-12-10	07-11-10	30-01-11
6 male mice	4 mg each			2	2	2
4 male mice	8 mg each	1	28-11-10	1	2
5 female mice	4 mg each	1 1 1	26-11-10 27-11-10 28-11-10	1	1(-1)	0
4 female mice	8 mg each			1	2	1(+1)

We are left with 19-4-5=10 mice.

Next Tuesday – 7 mice are scheduled to die.

I am left with 3 to test the reversibility of the drug later in January.

The histological processing of the tissues have started, we are running a trial, by using human liver and rat spleen. Tomorrow it will take the proper shape. By then I will process the mice tissues and get ready for the sectioning and staining by Thursday.

Will post the photos of mice tomorrow.