A group led by Dr. Han-Fei Ding of the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta, GA reports that the oncogene MYCN may drive neuronal progenitor cell proliferation, contributing to neuroblastoma development. This study can be found in the August 2009 issue of The American Journal of Pathology.
Neuroblastomas are the most common cancer in infancy, and nearly 50% of neuroblastomas occur in children under the age of two. Approximately 22% of neuroblastomas, which commonly contain undifferentiated or poorly differentiated neuroblasts, express amplified levels of the oncogene MYCN.
To identify the cell types that drive neuroblastoma development and the role of MYCN in this process, Alam et al examined mice that express MYCN in neural cells; these mice provide an animal model of human neuroblastoma. MYCN expression caused neuronal progenitors to divide as well as prevented their differentiation into more mature cells, and primary tumors were composed predominantly of these cells. These data indicate that the expansion of these neuronal progenitors may be pathogenic in the development of neuroblastoma and that MYCN may contribute to this process by driving the proliferation of the neuronal progenitor cell population.
Dr. Ding and colleagues postulate that “cooperation between oncogenic proteins and lineage-determining factors might be an important mechanism underlying the development of tissue-type specific tumors.”
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