Oncogene · 7 authors, 6 centres
This summary was generated by AI from a single paper. It has not been reviewed by a clinician and is not clinical advice. Verify against the source before acting on it.
This narrative review catalogs genetically engineered mouse models (GEMMs) available for head and neck cancers, including HNSCC, nasopharyngeal, salivary, and thyroid carcinomas. It highlights that while GEMMs recapitulate key features of the tumor microenvironment, most suffer from low tumor incidence, variable penetrance and latency, and limited ability to fully represent human tumor heterogeneity.
This narrative review synthesizes the landscape of genetically engineered mouse models (GEMMs) for head and neck cancers, encompassing HNSCC, nasopharyngeal, salivary gland, and thyroid carcinomas. The authors describe multiple GEMM development approaches, including Cre-LoxP and Tet-on systems, HPV E6/E7 transgenic models, and carcinogen-exposed (e.g., 4NQO) models, noting that each approach typically recapitulates only certain disease aspects. A key finding is that current HNSCC GEMMs mostly suffer from low tumor incidence, which hampers reproducibility of preclinical results in clinical follow-up studies. The authors note that E6 and E7 expression alone typically induces hyperplasia rather than malignant transformation without additional driver mutations or carcinogens. The review proposes that combining alterations in Tp53, Cdkn2a, and Pik3ca, or using CRISPR-based approaches, could improve model generation efficiency by reducing breeding time from over 10 months to under 4 months. Limitations include the inability to fully recapitulate tumor heterogeneity and difficulty modeling metastatic progression, as animals often must be euthanized due to primary tumor burden. The authors conclude that continued refinement of GEMMs is needed to enable evaluation of local and systemic responses to next-generation treatments.
