Abbie Lathrop

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Abbie E. C. Lathrop (1868 – 1918) was a rodent fancier who bred

inbred strains
for animal models, particularly for research on development and hereditary properties of cancer.

Miss Abbie EC Lathrop photographed for an article in The Springfield Weekly Republican.

[1]

Biography

Lathrop was born in 1868 in Illinois to schoolteachers. She was

Bussey Institute.[2] The United States government purchased her guinea pigs to test for toxic gas in the trenches of World War I.[3]

For the Granby Mouse Farm Lathrop sourced wild mice from Michigan and Vermont. She bred

Japanese waltzing mice as well as fancy mice.[4] The mice had straw bedding and lived in wooden boxes. They were fed a diet of oats and crackers. Lathrop reported going through one and a half tons of oats and over 12 barrels of crackers each month. She occasionally paid local children 7 cents an hour to clean the cages.[5]

As early as 1908[6] Lathrop found that unusual skin lesions were developing in some of her mice. She sent samples to scientists and corresponded with experimental pathologist Leo Loeb, who identified the lesions as malignant. Lathrop began developing inbred strains around 1910. Loeb and Lathrop performed experiments at her farm and the pair authored 10 journal articles from 1913 to 1919,[6] including those published in the Journal of Cancer Research and the Journal of Experimental Medicine. They established that ovariectomies reduced the incidence of mammary tumors and that tumor susceptibility varied in different strains of mice.[3]

A "Black 6" mouse

Mammalian geneticist

C57BL/6J ("Black 6") from Lathrop's mouse number 57.[3] Black 6 became the most frequently used strain of laboratory mouse.[3] While Little patronizingly called Lathrop a "talented pet-shop owner," his own DBA strain was probably derived from her partially inbred silver fawn mice.[7] Karin Knorr Cetina wrote in 2009 that at least five of the primary strains of laboratory mice in use may derive from a single female from Lathrop.[4]

Lathrop died of

The Jackson Laboratory.[8]

References

  1. ^ The Springfield Weekly Republican (1913). "The Mouse Fancier of Granby - Odd Industry of Miss Lathrop" (Newspaper). Chronicling America. Samuel Bowles and Son. p. 7.
  2. ISBN 1-86094-716-6
    .
  3. ^
    PMID 21061734
    .
  4. ^
    ISBN 978-0-674-03968-1
    .
  5. ISBN 978-1-84520-153-1
    .
  6. ^
    ISBN 0-691-01636-4
    .
  7. ISBN 978-0-8229-7784-1
    .
  8. ISBN 978-0-12-382008-2
    .

Further reading
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