Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in FEAT transgenic mouse

Transgenic mice (n= 40) overexpressing FEAT in the thymus, spleen, liver, and lung developed malignant lymphoma (47.5%, 19/40) and liver cancer (hepatocellular carcinoma, HCC) (35%, 14/40). Notably, HCC arose in half (13/26) of the male transgenic mice, indicating a strong male predilection similar to human HCC. Microarray-based comparative genomic hybridization (array-CGH) suggested that HCC in FEAT transgenic mice recapitulates human hepatocarcinogenesis. DNA labeling and hybridization to 244k slide format 60-mer oligonucleotide microarrays for array-CGH (Agilent Mouse Genome CGH Microarray Kit 244A) were performed using genomic DNA from mouse HCCs as experimental samples and genomic DNA from the liver of a normal C57BL/6 mouse as a reference sample. The microarrays were scanned using a Micro Array Scanner, and data were extracted using Feature Extraction software and analyzed using CGH analytics 3.4 software according to the manufacturer's instructions (Agilent Technologies).