A Novel Immunocompetent Preclinical Mouse Model to Uncover Oncogenic Initiators of Head and Neck Cancer

Mouse models of HNC have played an essential role in elucidating mechanisms driving tumor development and progression. However, the generation of new mouse models are extremely costly, laborious and time consuming, and are limited to the study of a few, and often “popular,” gene targets that do not fully recapitulate the intertumoral heterogeneity of HNCs. Using a novel preclinical model developed in our lab that involves the in vivo introduction of human-relevant HNC mutations by CRISPR-mediated gene editing, we aim to functionally interrogate and revea l molecular pathways and mechanisms driving tumor initiation and progression, and to test the highly intriguing, but as yet unproven, hypothesis that HNC initiation is driven by the acquisition and accumulation of mutations in somatic tissue stem cells and their progeny, a process of mutagenesis tha t may be influenced by sex and accelerated following carcinogen exposure.
Source: International Journal of Radiation Oncology * Biology * Physics - Category: Radiology Authors: Tags: 233 Source Type: research