SUMMARYBreast cancer is the most common malignancy in women of the Western world. Even though a large percentage of breast cancer patients show pathological complete remission after standard treatment regimes, approximately 30–40% are non-responsive and ultimately develop metastatic disease. To generate a good preclinical model of invasive breast cancer, we have taken a tissue-specific approach to somatically inactivate p53 and E-cadherin, the cardinal cell-cell adhesion receptor that is strongly associated with tumor invasiveness. In breast cancer, E-cadherin is found mutated or otherwise functionally silenced in invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC), which accounts for 10–15% of all breast cancers. We show that mammary-specific stochastic inactivation of conditional E-cadherin and p53 results in impaired mammary gland function during pregnancy through the induction of anoikis resistance of mammary epithelium, resulting in loss of epithelial organization and a dysfunctional mammary gland. Moreover, combined inactivation of E-cadherin and p53 induced lactation-independent development of invasive and metastatic mammary carcinomas, which showed strong resemblance to human pleomorphic ILC. Dissemination patterns of mouse ILC mimic the human malignancy, showing metastasis to the gastrointestinal tract, peritoneum, lung, lymph nodes and bone. Our results confirm that loss of E-cadherin contributes to both mammary tumor initiation and metastasis, and establish a preclinical mouse model of human ILC that can be used for the development of novel intervention strategies to treat invasive breast cancer.

Purpose: Hereditary breast cancer is partly explained by germline mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2. Although patients carry heterozygous mutations, their tumors have typically lost the remaining wild-type allele. Selectively targeting BRCA deficiency may therefore constitute an important therapeutic approach. Clinical trials applying this principle are underway, but it is unknown whether the compounds tested are optimal. It is therefore important to identify alternative compounds that specifically target BRCA deficiency and to test new combination therapies to establish optimal treatment strategies.Experimental Design: We did a high-throughput pharmaceutical screen on BRCA2-deficient mouse mammary tumor cells and isogenic controls with restored BRCA2 function. Subsequently, we validated positive hits in vitro and in vivo using mice carrying BRCA2-deficient mammary tumors.Results: Three alkylators-chlorambucil, melphalan, and nimustine-displayed strong and specific toxicity against BRCA2-deficient cells. In vivo, these showed heterogeneous but generally strong BRCA2-deficient antitumor activity, with melphalan and nimustine doing better than cisplatin and the poly-(ADP-ribose)-polymerase inhibitor olaparib (AZD2281) in this small study. In vitro drug combination experiments showed synergistic interactions between the alkylators and olaparib. Tumor intervention studies combining nimustine and olaparib resulted in recurrence-free survival exceeding 330 days in 3 of 5 animals tested.Conclusions: We generated and validated a platform for identification of compounds with specific activity against BRCA2-deficient cells that translates well to the preclinical setting. Our data call for the re-evaluation of alkylators, especially melphalan and nimustine, alone or in combination with the poly-(ADP-ribose)-polymerase inhibitors, for the treatment of breast cancers with a defective BRCA pathway.Clin Cancer Res; 16(1); 99-108. ©2010 AACR.Breast cancer is the most common malignancy in women. Approximately 10% to 15% of patients are reported to have a family history of breast cancer (1). Mutations in the two hereditary breast cancer genes BRCA1 and BRCA2, identified in the mid-1990s (2-5), are responsible for 15% to 20% of familial cases (1). Although more than a decade of research has significantly increased our knowledge on BRCA gene function, this has not yet led to specific guidelines for the treatment of hereditary breast cancer patients (6).BRCA1 and BRCA2 play major roles in the error-free repair of DNA double-strand breaks (DSB) through the process of homologous recombination (7-9). Breast and ovarian tumors in BRCA mutation carriers are typically deficient for BRCA function due to loss of heterozygosity (10,11). This inspired researchers to exploit the DNA repair defects of BRCA-mutated tumors by treating them with DNA-damaging agents that either directly or indirectly induce DSBs.Two classes of drugs that recently gained momentum in the treatment of BRCA-associated patients are platinumbased DNA cross-linking age...

Metastatic disease accounts for more than 90% of cancer-related deaths, but the development of effective antimetastatic agents has been hampered by the paucity of clinically relevant preclinical models of human metastatic disease. Here, we report the development of a mouse model of spontaneous breast cancer metastasis, which recapitulates key events in its formation and clinical course. Specifically, using the conditional K14cre; Cdh1 F/F ;Trp53 F/F model of de novo mammary tumor formation, we orthotopically transplanted invasive lobular carcinoma (mILC) fragments into mammary glands of wild-type syngeneic hosts. Once primary tumors were established in recipient mice, we mimicked the clinical course of treatment by conducting a mastectomy. After surgery, recipient mice succumbed to widespread overt metastatic disease in lymph nodes, lungs, and gastrointestinal tract. Genomic profiling of paired mammary tumors and distant metastases showed that our model provides a unique tool to further explore the biology of metastatic disease. Neoadjuvant and adjuvant intervention studies using standard-of-care chemotherapeutics showed the value of this model in determining therapeutic agents that can target early-and late-stage metastatic disease. In obtaining a more accurate preclinical model of metastatic lobular breast cancer, our work offers advances supporting the development of more effective treatment strategies for metastatic disease. Cancer Res; 73(1); 353-63. Ó2012 AACR.