Application and recent advances of laboratory mouse in human cancer research

: Mouse is the most popular laboratory animal in medical research. It is small in size with high fertility ability, and its cost is low. The most important characteristics of mouse are their abundant genetic resources. Up to now, 478 inbred strains have been cultured, and more than 2 000 mutant strains have been established by either spontaneous, inducible methods or transgenic technology, and conserved in world. As a parallel part of human genome project (HGP), the DNA sequencing of entire genome of mouse has been completed, which reveals that there is a high genetic similarity between mouse and human. As an animal model, mouse has been used for human cancer research for over one century because of the presence of numerous genetic variants. Over the past 20 years, genetically engineered mouse (GEM), including transgenic mouse, knock-out mouse, knock-in mouse, and knock-down mouse, have been cultured, thus, paved a way to deepen our understanding of tumorigenesis, and provided a valuable system for the evaluation of cancer diagnosis, innovative therapeutic, and prevention. In this review paper, we highlight the biological characteristics of mouse, introduce spontaneous and inducible cancer mouse models and GEM models. In addition, some recent strategies and accomplishments for producing complicated cancer models in the mouse as well as the limitation of mouse model are discussed.