Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

A Humanized Pattern Of Aromatase Expression Is Associated With Mammary Hyperplasia In Mice, Hong Zhao, Elizabeth K. Pearson, David C. Brooks, John S. Coon, Dong Chen, Masashi Demura, Ming Zhang, Charles V. Clevenger, Xia Xu, Timothy D. Veenstra, Robert T. Chatterton, Francesco J. Demayo, Serdar E. Bulun

Pharmaceutical Sciences Faculty Publications

Aromatase is essential for estrogen production and is the target of aromatase inhibitors, the most effective endocrine treatment for postmenopausal breast cancer. Peripheral tissues in women, including the breast, express aromatase via alternative promoters. Female mice lack the promoters that drive aromatase expression in peripheral tissues; thus, we generated a transgenic humanized aromatase (Arom(hum)) mouse line containing a single copy of the human aromatase gene to study the link between aromatase expression in mammary adipose tissue and breast pathology. Arom(hum) mice expressed human aromatase, driven by the proximal human promoters II and I.3 and the distal promoter I.4, in breast …