Novel strategy for rapid functional in vivo validation of oncogenic drivers in haematological malignancies

In cancer research, it remains challenging to functionally validate putative novel oncogenic drivers and to establish relevant preclinical models for evaluation of novel therapeutic strategies. Here, we describe an optimized and efficient pipeline for the generation of novel conditional overexpression mouse models in which putative oncogenes, along with an eGFP/Luciferase dual reporter, are expressed from the endogenous ROSA26 (R26) promoter. The efficiency of this approach was demonstrated by the generation and validation of novel R26 knock-in (KI) mice that allow conditional overexpression of Jarid2, Runx2, MN1 and a dominant negative allele of ETV6. As proof of concept, we confirm that MN1 overexpression in the hematopoietic lineage is sufficient to drive myeloid leukemia. In addition, we show that T-cell specific activation of MN1 in combination with loss of Pten increases tumour penetrance and stimulates the formation of Lyl1⁺ murine T-cell lymphoblastic leukemias or lymphomas (T-ALL/T-LBL). Finally, we demonstrate that these luciferase-positive murine AML and T-ALL/T-LBL cells are transplantable into immunocompromised mice allowing preclinical evaluation of novel anti-leukemic drugs in vivo.