Alvarez James V, Perez Denise, Chodosh Lewis A
Department of Cancer Biology and Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA.
Cancer Cell. 2006 Nov;10(5):347-9. doi: 10.1016/j.ccr.2006.10.016.
Mouse models that faithfully recapitulate human cancers are indispensable tools for studying the molecular mechanisms of tumorigenesis and testing potential anticancer therapies. In this issue of Cancer Cell, Derksen et al. describe a new mouse model that mimics multiple features of invasive lobular carcinoma of the breast (ILC), a histological subtype of human breast cancer for which no mouse model currently exists. This model further reveals an important causal link between E-cadherin loss and tumor initiation and metastasis and, in doing so, provides a valuable entrée into the tumor-suppressive functions of E-cadherin as well as the molecular underpinnings of ILC.
能够忠实地重现人类癌症的小鼠模型是研究肿瘤发生分子机制和测试潜在抗癌疗法不可或缺的工具。在本期《癌细胞》杂志中，德克森等人描述了一种新的小鼠模型，该模型模拟了乳腺浸润性小叶癌（ILC）的多种特征，ILC是一种人类乳腺癌的组织学亚型，目前尚无小鼠模型。该模型进一步揭示了E-钙黏蛋白缺失与肿瘤起始和转移之间的重要因果关系，从而为E-钙黏蛋白的肿瘤抑制功能以及ILC的分子基础提供了有价值的切入点。
