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Updated: Jun 1, 2026

Orthotopic Transplantation of Breast Tumors as Preclinical Models for Breast Cancer
Published on: May 18, 2020
Mammary epithelial-specific disruption of c-Src impairs cell cycle progression and tumorigenesis
Richard Marcotte1, Harvey W Smith, Virginie Sanguin-Gendreau
1Goodman Cancer Research Center and Department of Biology, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada H3A 1A3.
Abstract:
The tyrosine kinase c-Src is activated in a large proportion of breast cancers, in which it is thought to play a key role in promoting the malignant phenotype. c-Src activity is also elevated in transgenic mouse models of breast cancer, including the widely used polyomavirus middle-T antigen (PyVmT) model, which provides an opportunity to study the importance of c-Src in mammary tumorigenesis. However, germline c-Src deletion in mammary epithelial and stromal compartments complicates the interpretation of in vivo tumorigenesis studies as a result of severe defects in mammary gland development. We have therefore engineered a mouse strain in which deletion of c-Src can be targeted to the mammary epithelium. We demonstrate that mammary epithelial disruption of c-Src impairs proliferation and tumor progression driven by PyVmT in vivo. Whereas related kinases substitute for c-Src in PyVmT signaling, c-Src ablation impairs cell cycle progression with decreased cyclin expression and elevated expression of cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitors. Our data indicate that c-Src has essential and unique functions in proliferation and tumor progression in this mouse model that may also be important in certain contexts in some human breast cancers.
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