Zebrafish Hagoromo mutants up-regulate fgf8 postembryonically and develop neuroblastoma.

ABSTRACT: We screened an existing collection of zebrafish insertional mutants for cancer susceptibility by histologic examination of heterozygotes at 2 years of age. As most mutants had no altered cancer predisposition, this provided the first comprehensive description of spontaneous tumor spectrum and frequency in adult zebrafish. Moreover, the screen identified four lines, each carrying a different dominant mutant allele of Hagoromo previously linked to adult pigmentation defects, which develop tumors with high penetrance and that histologically resemble neuroblastoma. These tumors are clearly neural in origin, although they do not express catecholaminergic neuronal markers characteristic of human neuroblastoma. The zebrafish tumors result from inappropriate maintenance of a cell population within

SUBMITTER: Amsterdam A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2744123 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature