Welcome to the Transgenic, Knockout and Tumor model Center (TKTC)

Give me a place to stand and with a lever I will move the whole world -- Archimedes of Syracuse

To address the molecular basis of human diseases and develop novel therapeutic strategies for their treatment, an important component is to create animal models that can recapitulate human disease states. Partly supported by funds from the Stanford Cancer Institute, since 1996 the Transgenic, Knockout and Tumor model Center (TKTC) has produced in vitro and in vivo models to support research in a variety of different fields and applications.

Our goal is to provide the scientific community inside and outside of Stanford with the intellectual and technical expertise to develop the right “lever” they need to address their research questions.

The TKTC is a Stanford School of Medicine Core, and as such it does not make any profit but only recovers the expenses on a fee-per-service model. Our highly specialized and trained personnel will support our clients’ research by providing state of the art expertise at low-cost. These services include genome editing of mice, rats and cell lines, mouse line cryopreservation and re-derivation, ES cell targeting, PDX models, drug screening and a lot more. We offer our services to Stanford and non-Stanford investigators, including companies.

The mouse provides an excellent model organism because of its short gestation time, large litter size, fully sequenced genomic DNA and well-characterized embryonic development.  Most importantly, it is the best organism for transgenic and knockout techniques. The ability to introduce genes or sequences into mice provides a very powerful tool for dissecting complex biological processes and systems. With new genome editing technology development and availability of rat ES cells, we now can make transgenic and knockout rats that are the preferred models for some of the human diseases such as hypertension, inflammation, neurodegeneration, and cancer.

In the past 20 years since its inception, TKTC has generated over 1000 transgenic and knockout mouse models for research. These mouse models have resulted in hundreds of publications in peer-reviewed journals and hundreds of millions of dollars in funding. Our research and services have become a very important part of the research for many investigators and the demand for our services has been steadily increasing. 

Feel free to contact us if you have any questions. We are delighted to provide support.

Lab address: CCSR 0137, 269 Campus drive, Stanford, CA94305-5456, lab phone: 650-725-6871.

Dr. Vittorio Sebastiano: Director of the center with responsibility for its overall operation, vsebast@stanford.edu, 650-724-8084.

Dr. Hong Zeng: Sr. Research Scientist and manager, responsible for transgenic animal, gene targeting and mouse line services, hongzeng@stanford.edu, 650-724-9596.

Dr. Jeewon Kim: Research Scientist, responsible for animal tumor model service, jwonkim@stanford.edu, 650-721-1485.

Staff: Jennifer Lin, Yanfeng Li, Yinghua Xiao, Jieying Yang, and Jenny Cheng.