Chromosome anomalies in mammary carcinoma from transgenic WAPRAS mice: compression with human data

Transgenic WAPRAS mice, obtained by infection of the construct WAP promoter murine gene and the HRAS human protooncogene, develop mammary adenocarcinoma within 1-3 months after pregnancy. A cytogenetic analysis was performed on 17 tumors from 10 mice. Almost all detected anomalies were chromosome gains. The resulting trisomies affected recurrently chromosomes 1, 15, 19, 17, 7, and 12, in decreasing order of involvement. Although in situ hybridization showed that the transgene was integrated in chromosome 1, the duplication of this chromosome did not depend on the presence or absence of the transgene. Comparison with human data indicates that the 3 most frequently duplicated chromosomes in WAPRAS mice correspond to the human chromosome segments most frequently duplicated or amplified in breast cancer, i.e., 1q, 8q, and 11q13. None of the chromosome segments often deleted in human tumors were found to be duplicated in the mouse tumors.