Human breast tumors transplanted into mice are excellent models of metastatic cancer and are providing insights into how to attack breast cancers that no longer respond to the drugs used to treat them, according to research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
To find out, Einstein's George Karagiannis spent nearly three years experimenting with lab mice whose genetic mutations make them spontaneously develop breast cancer, as well as mice
given human breast tumors.
These molecular subtypes have recently been confirmed in a comprehensive characterization of
human breast tumors at the genomic, epigenetic, transcriptomic, and proteomic levels (Cancer Genome Atlas Network, 2012).
1 Darbe PD, Aljarrah A, Miller WR, Coldham NG, Sauer MJ, Pope GS, Concentration of Parabens
in human breast tumors.
Now, researchers at the School of Medicine have shown that
human breast tumors transplanted into mice are excellent models of metastatic cancer and could be valuable tools in the search for better treatments.