Patent ID: 8809618

Claim:
A method for performing external monitoring of compounds in living transgenic mouse by non-invasive imaging, comprising the steps of: administering said compounds to the transgenic mouse; and monitoring by non-invasive imaging, in vivo and simultaneously in all tissues that can express an intracellular receptor, the state of activation of the intracellular receptor; wherein the transgenic mouse is produced by the steps of: generating a sequence wherein a reporter transgene is operably ligated to a constitutive non tissue-specific promoter containing one or more intracellular receptor/transcription factor responsive elements; said promoter-reporter construct being flanked on each of its 3′ and 5′ ends by an insulator sequence selected from the group consisting of matrix attachment regions (MAR), beta-globin hypersensitive site 4 (HS4) and inverted terminal repeat sequences (ITR); incorporating said reporter transgene into the genome of said mouse by injection of the sequence into fertilized eggs of a mouse whose genome does not include said reporter transgene; and obtaining the transgenic mouse and its progeny that include said reporter transgene in each cell, and wherein said compound modulates the reporter transgene expression at the same time in all said tissues that express said intracellular receptor, through (a) activation of the intracellular receptor/transcription factor by said compound, (b) the intracellular receptor/transcription factor's binding to the responsive elements of the promoter of the transgene; and (c) expression of the reporter transgene, wherein the expression of the reporter transgene is observable or measurable in vivo by non-invasive imaging; and wherein said sequence being injected into the fertilized eggs is MAR-ERE2X-TKpr-Luciferase-MAR or HS4-ERE2X-TKpr-Luciferase-HS4.