Microenvironment alters epigenetic and gene expression profiles in Swarm rat chondrosarcoma tumors.

Background: Chondrosarcomas are malignant cartilage tumors that do not respond to traditional chemotherapy or radiation. The 5-year survival rate of histologic grade III chondrosarcoma is less than 30%. An animal model of chondrosarcoma has been established--namely, the Swarm Rat Chondrosarcoma (SRC)--and shown to resemble the human disease.

A comprehensive nonredundant expressed sequence tag collection for the developing Rattus norvegicus heart.

Congenital heart defects affect approximately 1,000,000 people in the United States, with 40,000 new births contributing to that number every year. A large percentage of these defects can be attributed to septal defects. We assembled a nonredundant collection of over 12,000 expressed sequence tags (ESTs) from a total of 30,000 ESTs, with the ultimate goal of identifying spatially and/or temporally regulated genes during heart septation.

Identification and initial characterization of 6,000 expressed sequenced tags (ESTs) from rat normal-growing cartilage and swarm rat chondrosarcoma cDNA libraries.

Chondrosarcoma is the second most common type of skeletal malignancy with a survival rate at five years for histological grade III of only 29 percent. The development of a reliable chondrosarcoma animal model could enable the study of tumor growth and progression, the effect of the host on tumor behavior, and the effectiveness of various therapeutic modalities. The Swarm rat chondrosarcoma is a tumor tissue line that has been maintained through the years by serial subcutaneous injections, and the histochemical characteristics of the tumor have remained essentially similar in all transplants over the years.