Of mice and men: cancer gene discovery using comparative oncogenomics

With the proliferation of high-throughput technologies to profile the cancer genome, methods to distinguish causal from bystander genetic events are needed. Two recent reports by Zender et al. and Kim et al. in Cell use genetically defined mouse models to serve as biological filters to mine the human cancer genome. Integration of high-resolution copy number profiles of mouse tumor models and human tumors identified cIAP1 and Yap as oncogenes in human hepatocellular carcinoma, while NEDD9 was identified as a metastasis gene in human melanoma. Together, these reports demonstrate that a comparative oncogenomics approach can identify genes causally involved in oncogenesis and metastasis.