SCIENCE SEEN
MODELS AND TARGETS
HIC-down
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine researchers developed a murine model to investigate the role of the HIC1 gene, which encodes a zinc-finger transcription factor. HIC1 is hypermethylated (in cancer) and therefore transcriptionally silent in many cancer types. HIC1-/- mice were not viable. But, heterozygotes developed normally for about a year, and then a variety of sex-dependent tumors arose. Males displayed epithelial cancers and females developed lymphomas and sarcomas.
In most tumor tissue, researchers found at least one promoter of the wild-type HIC1 allele to be hypermethylated. The scientists postulate that HIC1 is the first hypermethylated tumor-suppressor candidate to have been demonstrated with a murine knockout (W.Y. Chen et al., "Heterozygous disruption of the Hic1 predisposes mice to a gender dependent spectrum of malignant tumors," Nat Gen, 33:197-202, February 2003).
DEP-ressed Salt Lake City's Myriad Genetics is following up on a yet unpublished study of ...
