Suppression of melanotroph carcinogenesis leads to accelerated progression of pituitary anterior lobe tumors and medullary thyroid carcinomas in Rb+/- mice.

Mice with a single copy of the retinoblastoma gene (Rb(+/-)) develop a syndrome of multiple neuroendocrine neoplasia. They usually succumb to fast-growing, Rb-deficient melanotroph tumors of the pituitary intermediate lobe, which are extremely rare in humans. Thus, full assessment of Rb role in other, more relevant to human pathology, neoplasms is complicated.

Induction of carcinogenesis by concurrent inactivation of p53 and Rb1 in the mouse ovarian surface epithelium.

Alterations in p53 and Rb pathways are observed frequently in epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC).However, their roles in EOC initiation remain uncertain. Using a single intrabursal administration of recombinant adenovirus expressing Cre, we demonstrate that concurrent inactivation of p53 and Rb1 is sufficient for reproducible induction of ovarian epithelial carcinogenesis in mice homozygous for conditional gene alleles.