Different types of animals are used for as the models for the cancer research such as, mouse, rat, drosophila, rabbit, zebra fish, pig goat etc. Among them mouse is considered as the ideal model for the cancer research since many physiological conditions in mice resemble to the human and moreover, mice is laboratory friendly, can be genetically modified to resemble the several human disease models, mice is closely related to the human genome phenotype, cost effective, easy handling etc. So mouse is considered as the best models for the cancer research and there are different types of mice models have been discovered in order to achieve the greater success in the cancer research and few of such models are spontaneous tumor models, carcinogen induced models- that is induced the cancer by the use of the chemical carcinogenic substance, transplantation models etc. Among them transplantation model is very widely used in the laboratory research and it is alos of various subtypes including allograft transplantation models, xenograft transplantation models including the human tumor xenografts transferred to the animal that is in mice
The choice of animal species used in a research depends on multiple things, some of which are (i) scientific question in consideration; (ii) methodology that is going to be used; and (iii) infrastructure (i.e. availability of appropriate animal house). Each species has certain advantages and disadvantages. The mice is definitely a species used the most in different research fields due to facts that Bhakta Gaire mentioned in her post. However, sometimes is better to use other species due to their larger size or better resemblance to humans (i.e. rat in toxicology).
I've worked with EAC on swis albino mice for more than two years. In our lab we never use rats as anticancer studies model. The main reason behind this: the extracellular fluid (ECF) you have to collect from the animal model you might go for mice, as it's uncertain to collect ECF from rats. Along with this, at the time of dissecting the rat, it has higher chance for cutting the blood vessels which can cause for mixing of blood with the ECF where the WBC can cause the death of certain cancer cells, leading to decreased cancerous cell count than the actual value. Though the absolute number of cancerous cells can not be counted but we can't take risk for making the whole efforts in vain.
Because of nearly similar biological response. The experimental investigation of the pharmacological effect should be documented in two animal species.
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