Tracking Origins of Prostate Cancer: An Innovative in Vivo Modeling

Heterogeneity, variable and often unpredictable clinical course are fundamental challenges in management of patients with prostate cancer. To make rapid advances in understanding of disease mechanism that can be translated to clinical care in short order, there is an immediate need for innovative in vivo disease models that accurately recapitulate human disease at cellular level. We propose to develop an innovative and hitherto not attempted in vivo prostate cancer model that will delineate the exact cell of origin through different stages of prostate cancer development and progression. We propose to study possible cell(s) of origin for prostate cancer by combinatorial expression of florescent magenta, cyan and yellow primary color proteins in prostate at development in mice. The study includes (1) Construction of Prorainbow plasmid with fluorescent proteins (XFPs) under control by prostate epithelial and basal cell-specific promoters. (2)Establish mouse line with the resulting Prorainbow construct and generation of transgenic mice by crossing with Cre mice. (3) Study the transgenic Prorainbow mice under normal and oncogenic conditions. The study is expected to produce in vivo animal of prostate cancer with unique capabilities. The original document contains color images.