Trouillas J, Girod C
Laboratoire d'Histologie, Faculté de Médecine Alexis Carrel, Lyon, France.
Pathol Res Pract. 1988 Sep;183(5):638-41. doi: 10.1016/S0344-0338(88)80031-1.
Three animal models of pituitary tumors were compared: the spontaneous prolactinoma in Wistar/Furth (W/Fu) rats, an estrogen-induced transplantable tumor in the Fischer rat (MtTF4), and a spontaneous prolactin transplantable tumor in the W/Fu rat (SMtTW1). The spontaneous prolactinoma in W/Fu rats is interesting in that it resembles the human prolactinoma by its morphological characteristics, its benign nature, and its secretion of prolactin alone. It may be useful to study the initial factors of tumorigenesis but it is very expensive and the variability of tumor growth makes it difficult to plan experiments. The MtTF4 tumor is an easy model to study because it is transplantable but this tumor differs from most human pituitary tumors by its induction by estrogen, its malignancy, its undifferentiated aspect and its secretion of ACTH, GH, and prolactin. The SMtTW1 tumor, a new model of transplantable tumor, is close to the human pituitary tumor because the initial tumor is spontaneous, the transplanted tumors are benign and well differentiated. They secrete prolactin only. These transplantable tumors are valuable for studying the factors of growth. Since no single tumor system is a perfect model, researchers have to work on different models each of which is appropriate for investigating specific problems.
Wistar/Furth（W/Fu）大鼠的自发性催乳素瘤、Fischer大鼠中雌激素诱导的可移植性肿瘤（MtTF4）以及W/Fu大鼠的自发性催乳素可移植性肿瘤（SMtTW1）。W/Fu大鼠的自发性催乳素瘤很有意思，因为它在形态特征、良性性质以及仅分泌催乳素方面与人类催乳素瘤相似。它可能有助于研究肿瘤发生的初始因素，但成本非常高，而且肿瘤生长的变异性使得难以规划实验。MtTF4肿瘤是一种易于研究的模型，因为它是可移植的，但该肿瘤与大多数人类垂体瘤不同，它由雌激素诱导，具有恶性、未分化的特征且分泌促肾上腺皮质激素、生长激素和催乳素。SMtTW1肿瘤是一种新的可移植性肿瘤模型，与人类垂体瘤相似，因为初始肿瘤是自发性的，移植后的肿瘤是良性且分化良好的。它们仅分泌催乳素。这些可移植性肿瘤对于研究生长因素很有价值。由于没有单一的肿瘤系统是完美的模型，研究人员必须研究不同的模型，每个模型都适合研究特定的问题。
