Cell of Origin: Mouse Model Offers Insights Into Process of Malignancy

Extract

When the final history of cancer research is one day written, retinoblastoma will deserve its own chapter. Studies of this rare childhood tumor have yielded the first widely accepted tumor progression model, the first cloned tumor suppressor gene, and several other firsts in basic cancer research.

Now, another first could be on the way. As recently published in Cancer Cell, Canadian scientists reported in mouse studies that they have identified the specific type of cell in the developing retina that produces retinoblastoma, noting when and why the trouble arises. With these data and other recent advances in modeling the tumor in mice, researchers in the field say they may soon be in the enviable position to track retinoblastoma in real time from initiation to metastasis, a long-standing goal of cancer researchers.

Although the finding still must be confirmed in follow-up studies, many say it provides an excellent starting point to explore the notoriously tough to study “cell-of-origin” question that lies at the heart of the cancer process. “It is a meticulous and thoughtful study that for the first time, as far as I am aware, provides a relevant framework for investigating how absence of the retinoblastoma gene product might give rise to a malignant tumor of the retina,” said distinguished pathologist Henry Harris, of the University of Oxford in England.