Pathway-specific engineered mouse allograft models functionally recapitulate human serous epithelial ovarian cancer.

The high mortality rate from ovarian cancers can be attributed to late-stage diagnosis and lack of effective treatment. Despite enormous effort to develop better targeted therapies, platinum-based chemotherapy still remains the standard of care for ovarian cancer patients, and resistance occurs at a high rate. One of the rate limiting factors for translation of new drug discoveries into clinical treatments has been the lack of suitable preclinical cancer models with high predictive value.

The current state of preclinical prostate cancer animal models.

Prostate cancer continues to be a major cause of morbidity and mortality in men around the world. The field of prostate cancer research continues to be hindered by the lack of relevant preclinical models to study tumorigenesis and to further development of effective prevention and therapeutic strategies. The Prostate Cancer Foundation held a Prostate Cancer Models Working Group (PCMWG) Summit on August 6th and 7th, 2007 to address these issues.

In vivo inactivation of pRb, p107 and p130 in murine neuroprogenitor cells leads to major CNS developmental defects and high seizure rates.

Nestin-positive cells were targeted for pRb, p107 and p130 (pRb(f)) inactivation by expression of T(121), a truncated SV40 large T antigen that selectively binds to and inactivates pRb(f). Cre expression was initiated under GFAP control, resulting in T(121) expression restricted to neuroprogenitor cells beginning at embryonic day 11.5 (E11.