Copy number alterations in primary tumors and metastases from a BALB-NeuT murine breast cancer transplantation model. Mus musculus

Genome profiling of primary tumors and matched metastases from a BALB-NeuT murine breast cancer transplantation model. The first goal of this study was to investigate the differences of primary tumors and metastases with regard to copy number alterations. The second goal was to infer phylogenetic trees reflecting the evolutionary paths of primary tumors and their derived metastases (only mice with at least one metastasis were used for phylogenetic analyses). Overall design: Small pieces (2 mm in diameter) of mammary glands obtained from transgenic BALB-NeuT mice were transplanted into the cleared fat pads of wild type BALB/c mice. Primary tumors were removed when they reached a size of 5-10 mm in diameter. Thereafter, mice were sacrificed 17 weeks after curative surgery and metastases were extracted. 54 primary tumors and 44 matched metastases were profiled by aCGH. For each sample the spleen DNA of a wild type BALB/c mouse was used as reference.