Study on the mechanism of development of differentiated adenocarcinoma from intestinal metaplasia

肠化生被认为是一种易导致癌症发展的疾病。然而，没有直接证据表明肠化生会导致癌症。在本研究项目中，我们可以证明在表达cdx-2的转基因小鼠胃中，由肠化生发展成具有分化组织学特征的胃腺癌。基因改变分析显示，人类胃癌中常见的突变事件（如p53或APC基因突变或截断）也发生在小鼠肿瘤中。因此，该模型对于分析导致癌变的分子事件以及抑制癌症发展的介入性研究将非常有用。

Intestinal metaplasia has been considered as a condition predisposing cancer development.However, no direct evidence on cancer development from intestinal metaplasia has been provided.In this research project, we could demonstrate that gastric adenocarcinoma with differentiated histological features developed from intestinal metaplasia in the cdx-2 expressing transgenic mice stomach. The analysis of genetic alteration revealed that mutational events frequently observed in human gastric cancer (such as p53 or APC gene mutations or truncations) occurred in the mice tumors. Therefore, this model will be quite useful for analyzing the molecular events leading to carcinogenesis and also for interventional studies to suppress cancer development.