Murine Models for Skin Cancer

All mice were housed in the Animal Care Facility at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, and all procedures were approved by Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and conformed to NIH guidelines. All mice strains were maintained in a room with 12/12 (day/night) light cycle with a temperature of 70–72 °F. K14Cre mice were available from the Jackson Laboratory (Bar Harbor, ME). All mice were maintained on a mix C57bl/6 background. DMBA/TPA treatment was performed according to Abel et al.^{22 (link)}. using a single dose of DMBA (25 μg) and a bi-weekly schedule for TPA (4 μg) over 23 weeks. The PLPCreERT2; Nf1^f/−; ROSA-LacZ mice^{31 (link)} was conditionally activated with a single subcutaneous dose of 4-hydroxytamoxifen (40 μg) dissolved in 100% ethanol on the first postnatal day. Genotyping was performed by PCR as reported elsewhere^{14 (link),23 (link),26 (link),67 (link)}. A total number of 59 mice (DMBA/TPA study) and 216 mice (MPNST study) were used in this report. For the DMBA/TPA study, full randomization was not possible to maximize the number of same sex mice and enrolled on treatment or vehicle at 3 months old. The investigators were not blinded to the group allocation during the experiment. No mice were excluded for any reasons.