Conditional Estrogen Receptor Knockout Mouse Model for Studying Mammary Tumorigenesis

摘要

In addition to accomplish the main goal of this grant proposal, i.e. to generating mice with estrogen receptor (ER) alpha gene ablation in the mammary gland of mice, we have also carried out other tasks. A summary of our findings follows: (1) In order to identify targets of ER-alpha, ER-beta genes, we used microarray and profiled the targets for estrogen and bis phenol-A. This will be of help in understanding the mechanism by which different ligands function in the breast cancer cells. (2) We identified the F-domain of ER-alpha as playing an important role in the regulation of ER activity. (3) We constructed ER-alpha targeting vectors and generated ER-alpha embryonic cell lines. (4) We generated floxed ER-alpha mice, which will be used to generate tissue specific mice (e.g. mammary). Thus these tools and results will be of great use in understanding breast cancer disease process with reference to the role of estrogen receptor.