A U.S. study suggests cancer research should use a new mouse model that mimics the levels of genomic instability in human cancers. Dr. Ronald DePinho and colleagues at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute demonstrated mouse and human tumors show similar genetic alterations by engineering lymphoma-prone mice with chromosomal instability to assess the usefulness of mouse models in cancer gene discovery, UPI reported. Using a comparative genomics approach they identified mutated genes in the model that are also altered in human T-cell acute lymphoblastic lymphomas and in a diverse range of other tumors. The researchers said they demonstrated a complexity and comparability in the human and mouse oncogenes that they believe means mouse models of tumors with a high degree of genomic instability will be a valuable resource for investigating complex human cancer genomes. The research appears online in the journal Nature.
