Study Offers New Model for Breast Cancer
: "Mon Mar 22 15:14:35 2004 Pacific Time
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., March 22 (AScribe Newswire) -- The last few years have witnessed critical advances in breast cancer therapies. Still, the disease afflicts one in eight American women, and scientists have yet to develop a living model with which they can study the intricacies of human breast-tumor behavior. Now, a team in the lab of scientist Robert Weinberg at Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research has successfully grafted human breast tissue into the mammary glands of mice. As a result, the mice formed functional breasts that are capable of producing human breast milk. More importantly, some of these mice were engineered to form early-stage breast tumors like those found in humans. "[Mice capable of producing human breast milk. Why does that sound so disturbing? - J]