Seeing Gene Alterations
A ”cancer rainbow” mouse is being used by Joshua Snyder’s Cancer Initiation and Cancer Cell Behavior Lab to highlight different versions of the crucial HER2 gene and may help explain different outcomes in HER2-positive human breast cancers. Their work (Ginzel, Acharya, and Lubkov et.al.) shows that each version of HER2 (marked in different colors) is associated with early changes to epithelial cell fate, tumor growth rate and invasiveness. This image is the October cover of Molecular Cancer Research.