Publications by authors named "Rita Quintana"

The most common events in breast cancer (BC) involve chromosome arm losses and gains. Here we describe identification of 1089 gene-centric common insertion sites (gCIS) from transposon-based screens in 8 mouse models of BC. Some gCIS are driver-specific, others driver non-specific, and still others associated with tumor histology.

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Autosomal recessive SOPH syndrome was first described in the Yakuts population of Asia by Maksimova et al. in 2010. It arises from biallelic pathogenic variants in the NBAS gene and is characterized by severe postnatal growth retardation, senile facial appearance, small hands and feet, optic atrophy with loss of visual acuity and color vision, and normal intelligence (OMIM #614800).

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RAS genes are mutated in 20% of human tumors, but these mutations are very rare in breast cancer. Here, we used a mouse model to generate tumors upon activation of a mutagenic T2Onc2 transposon via expression of a transposase driven by the keratin K5 promoter in a p53 background. These animals mainly developed mammary tumors, most of which had transposon insertions in one of two RASGAP genes, neurofibromin1 () and RAS p21 protein activator ().

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CYLD is a tumor-suppressor gene mutated in the skin appendage tumors cylindromas, trichoepitheliomas, and spiradenomas. We have performed in vivo metastasis assays in nude mice and found that the loss of the deubiquitinase function of CYLD in squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) cells greatly enhances the lung metastatic capability of these cells. These metastases showed several characteristics that make them distinguishable from those carrying a functional CYLD, such as robust angiogenesis, increased expression of tumor malignancy markers of SCCs, and a decrease in the expression of the suppressor of metastasis Maspin.

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Nonmelanoma skin cancer (NMSC) is by far the most frequent type of cancer in humans. NMSC includes several types of malignancies with different clinical outcomes, the most frequent being basal and squamous cell carcinomas. We have used the Sleeping Beauty transposon/transposase system to identify somatic mutations associated with NMSC.

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