In 1930 W.H. Hall brought random bred mice from the Imperial Cancer Research Fund Laboratories at Mill Hill, London to the Univiersity of Otago Medical School, New Zealand. In 1948 several pairs of mice from this colony, which had no systematic relationship, were sent to Marianne Bielschowsky and C. M. Goodall at the Hugh Adam Department of Cancer Research and these researchers generated several inbred strains from these mice. A pair of agouti mice became the founders for inbreeding and at F3 some offspring were found to have black coats. One pair of black siblings was used as the foundation for the NZB/Bl inbred strain, which reached generation F82 in 1970. Hemolytic anemia developed as a strain characteristic, identified as early as F11 (Bielschowsky and Goodall, 1970). In the spring of 1999, when that strain was at inbreeding generation F105, mice were sent from Dr. J. C. Schofield of The University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, to The Jackson Laboratory. This strain continued to be maintained by sibling intercross and in 2003 embryos were cryopreserved from parents at generation F109.
