NEW YORK, May 17 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists have created an animal model of lung adenocarcinoma that can be used to test the efficacy of targeted human lung cancer therapies.
Drs. Katerina Politi, Harold Varmus and colleagues at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York say researchers can use the model to understand how mutations in the human epidermal growth factor receptor, or EGFR, gene initiate lung tumors, which are the most common cause of cancer mortality.
"In addition, these models will allow us to evaluate the effectiveness of new drugs and drug combinations and to study the molecular basis of resistance to existing tyrosine kinase inhibitors," said Politi.
Lung cancer patients who harbor mutations in their EGFR gene generally have a better response to drugs that inhibit EGFR, such as Iressa and Tarceva.
The researchers say they engineered a strain of mice with a mutated form of EGFR that can be turned on or off in lung cells at will. The inducible EGFR-mutant mice allow the scientists to evaluate the contribution of EGFR mutations to lung cancer formation, progression and response to chemotherapeutics.
The study is reported in the June 1 issue of the journal Genes & Development.
