Stochastic appearance of mammary tumors in transgenic mice carrying the MMTV/c-neu oncogene

Failure of central nervous system myelination in MBP/c-myc transgenic mice: evidence for c-myc cytotoxicity

“…The ultrastructural features of cells in the tumors were similar to those of poorly di erentiated cells and the light microscopic features of the tumors did not resemble those of human oligodendrogliomas. In contrast to the low frequency of oligodendrocytic tumors in MBP/c-neu transgenic mice, a high frequency of mammary adenocarcinomas was observed in transgenic mice that expressed the neu oncogene in mammary epithelium (Muller et al, 1988;Bouchard et al, 1989).…”

Signal transduction in mammary tumorigenesis: a transgenic perspective

“…To directly test the importance of erbB-2 in mammary tumorigenesis, transgenic mice carrying an activated form of the erbB-2/neu oncogene under the transcriptional control of the mouse mammary tumor virus long terminal repeat were derived. Mammary epithelial speci®c-expression of a constitutively active ErbB-2 or a similarly altered human erbB-2 in the mammary epithelium of transgenic mice (Bouchard et al, 1989;Guy et al, 1996;Luchini et al, 1992;Muller et al, 1988;Stocklin et al, 1993) results in the rapid induction of mammary tumors that histologically resemble human comedocarcinomas (Cardi and Muller, 1993). Interestingly, human comedo-carcinomas express elevated ErbB-2 levels (Morrison, 1994), have a higher proliferative rate and are clinically more severe than other ductal carcinoma in situ (Patchefsky et al, 1989).…”

Cofactor competition between the ligand-bound oestrogen receptor and an intron 1 enhancer leads to oestrogen repression of ERBB2 expression in breast cancer

“…The protein is only expressed at low levels in most normal adult tissues, but is overexpressed in a number of human tumours, including 25 ± 30% of breast carcinomas, where it is a marker of poor prognosis (Slamon et al, 1987;Revillion et al, 1998). In addition, experiments in vitro and in transgenic mice have shown that overexpression of ERBB2, or its rodent counterpart, c-neu, in breast epithelial cells can result in cellular transformation (DiFiore, 1987;Bouchard et al, 1989;D'Souza et al, 1993). Taken together these ®ndings have strongly implicated this gene in the pathogenesis of mammary carcinoma and this has led to the development of a therapeutic antibody against ErbB2 which is showing good clinical promise (Nass et al, 1998) thus demonstrating the relevance of these studies to patient care.…”