Burkitt’s lymphoma is a form of cancer that was first discovered among African populations. Normally rare in the United States (although it is one of the leading forms of cancer in Africa), incidence of the cancer has soared in the United States and elsewhere along with the AIDS epidemic. For reasons that aren’t fully understood there is a complex interaction between some diseases and the underlying genetic cause of the disease. THe National Institutes of Health recently announced that they had culminated 10 years of research by creating the world’s first transgenic mouse that suffers from the disease.
In human beings Burkitt’s lymphoma occurs among people who have a specific genetic abnormality. The MYC gene, which acts to spur cell growth, is supposed to be located on chromosome 8 but instead gets transposed onto a different chromosome, often 14. The Epstein-Barr virus also appears to play a key role in the emergence of the lymphoma.
In creating the animal model in mice, researchers genetically modified the mouse genome to contract a Burkitt’s like disease. “We in effect created a ‘mini-gene’ that reproduces the cancer as it occurs in people,” researcher Herbert C. Morse III, MD, said in a prepared statement.
With an animal model now available, research will proceed into trying to better understand the various aspects of the disease, especially why some people with the genetic defect seem predisposed to Burkitt’s while others contract entirely different forms of cancer. Very little has been learned about the disease from studying humans alone, and the researchers hope mice studies will allow scientists to increase pick up the research pace.
“The only way to find this out [the underlying way the disease works] is to invest basic research into mouse models of cancer,” Morse said.
Source:
Transgenic mice aid research into deadly cancer. National Institutes of Health Press Release, October 16, 2000.
Burkitt’s lymphoma in the mouse. S Janz, HC Morse III, et al. Journal of Experimental Medicine 92(8):1183-90 (2000).