Steroid hormones are found to play a major role in the genesis and progression of mammary tumors. The aim of this study was to immunohistochemically detect the presence of estrogen receptor alpha (ERα), estrogen receptor beta (ERβ), and progesterone receptor (PR) and also to study the association between these markers in 29 cases of benign (11) and malignant (18) canine mammary tumors. ERα immunostaining was noticed in only one case of carcinosarcoma specifically in the nuclei of epithelial and a few myoepithelial cells. ERβ immunostaining was noticed in the nuclei and cytoplasm of epithelial cells and smooth muscles lining the blood vessels. Immunoexpression of ERβ was 82% in benign tumors and 78% in malignant tumors. PR immunostaining was expressed in the nuclei of epithelial cells in both benign and malignant tumors. Among the 15 PR+ cases, 6 (55%) were of benign type, and 9 (50%) were of malignant type. The most common group of hormone receptor was the ERα−/PR+/ERβ+ (46%) in benign tumors and ERα−/PR−/ERβ+ (38%) in malignant tumors. Although there was no significant association between ERα and PR with ERβ, the findings indicated that ERβ was consistently expressed in both benign and malignant tumors, irrespective of ERα and PR status.

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Venipuncture, phlebotomy, or blood collection is a specific and important procedure for collecting samples from research animals. Many research techniques require multiple blood samples to analyze the data. In truth, laboratory rodents are smaller in size and have a relatively low blood volume compared to humans. Any major reduction in blood volume would have an extreme consequence on the animal’s biology. Consequently, the safe amount of blood samples that can be obtained from an animal and the frequency of safe blood collection are the two extremely important factors to consider for protecting the health and welfare of the animals. Because stress to the study animal affects the research outcome, the techniques used should allow blood sampling while diminishing the potential for pain, suffering, avoidable stress, or unexpected results in the study animal. Several regulatory bodies have issued guidelines for collecting blood from study animals. Information on general blood collection guidelines and the different blood collection sites in laboratory animal species are scattered across various literature. This review presents a consolidated data on all the guidelines and precautions involved in blood sampling from small laboratory animals. Using suitable keywords, reference documents were collected from online databases like PubMed, Embase, Scopus, Medline and Google Search. However, researchers are the better judges in choosing the right blood collection method to use in their study, keeping in mind the welfare and health of their research animals.

Animal experiments are routinely carried out worldwide either in educational setups or in research setups. Animal research can be basic or applied, where in the applied research the test compound/drug is tested in animals for its safety and efficacy before going into clinical trials. Planning for conducting in vivo animal experiments requires certain preliminary behind-the-scene preparations. These background preparations form the foundation for a valid and reproducible animal experiment. But often these background preparations are overlooked while planning for experiments leading to poor quality, translatability and reproducibility of animal studies. Even though many reporting guidelines are available, there is very little guidance on how to plan for animal experiments. Without better planning, better reporting is not going to help in producing valid research results. Better Planning, careful execution and proper reporting are all essential for good research. Hence, this paper discusses about the steps to follow while planning an animal experiment to produce a valid, reproducible and translatable results known as responsible research.