MGC-Foundation

Animal Models for Immunological Disorders

Professor Klaus Rajewsky, a world-famous immunologist and geneticist, has chosen Ascenion GmbH as marketing partner for more than 50 transgenic mice for which he holds the property rights. The mouse strains have been developed mainly as models of immune system disease. They enable research into disease processes as well as the targeted development of new therapies, for example for tumours of the immune system or Crohn’s disease. (Animal Models)

Commercial users, in particular biotech and pharma companies, can license these animal models through Ascenion. The licence fees are paid to a non-profitmaking foundation, the Mouse Genetics Cologne Foundation (MGC Foundation), which was established especially for this purpose. The MGC Foundation then makes these tax-free funds available to research programmes, mainly at the Institute for Genetics of the University of Cologne and at the CBR Institute for Biomedical Research in Boston. Professor Rajewsky developed the transgenic mice at the Institute for Genetics in Cologne, where he worked for nearly 40 years, before moving to the CBR Institute for Biomedical Research at the Harvard Medical School in 2002.

Non-commercial users, that is, researchers in universities and public research institutes, may continue to use the animal models without a licence and can order them directly from the Jackson Laboratory in Maine, USA (www.jax.org) or from the European Mouse Mutant Archive EMMA (www.emmanet.org).