Residual tumor suppressor activities of tumorigenic p53 mutants enhance survival under chemotherapy

p53 mutations are believed to correlate with poor patient survival, as mutations abolish the transcriptional function of wild-type p53 in the DNA damage response and mutant p53 gain-of-function activities enhance drug resistance. Moreover, p53 also exhibits non-transcriptional apoptotic activity with yet unclear in vivo relevance for tumor suppression and cancer therapy. We have generated mice expressing a unique p53 mutant (R178E, human R181E) that is DNA binding deficient without alterations in the global structure or DNA binding surface. The aim of this study is to use this new mouse model to demonstrate that a DNA binding-deficient p53 mutant can drive tumor development while retaining non-transcriptional apoptotic activities.