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Ottewell et al. J Cancer Metastasis Treat 2021;7:11 Journal of Cancer
DOI: 10.20517/2394-4722.2021.14
Metastasis and Treatment

Review Open Access

Advances in murine models of breast cancer bone
disease

Penelope D. Ottewell, Michelle A. Lawson

Department of Oncology and Metabolism, Mellanby Centre for Bone Research, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2RX, UK.
Correspondence to: Dr. Penelope D. Ottewell, Department of Oncology and Metabolism, Mellanby Centre for Bone Research,
University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2RX, UK. E-mail: p.d.ottewell@sheffield.ac.uk

How to cite this article: Ottewell PD, Lawson MA. Advances in murine models of breast cancer bone disease. J Cancer Metastasis
Treat 2021;7:11. https://dx.doi.org/10.20517/2394-4722.2021.14

Received: 22 Jan 2021 First Decision: 10 Feb 2021 Revised: 24 Feb 2021 Accepted: 26 Feb 2021 Published: 8 Mar 2021

Academic Editor: Lucio Miele Copy Editor: Yue-Yue Zhang Production Editor: Yue-Yue Zhang

Abstract
Bone is the most prevalent metastatic site for breast cancer affecting ~70% of patients with late-stage disease.
Treatments for this condition currently focus on controlling disease progression and limiting tumour-induced
damage to bone, thereby playing a valuable role in increasing quality of life. However, limited understanding of the
interplay between tumour cells and their environment during bone metastasis has impeded the development of
curative treatments. To unravel the complex genetic and phenotypic alterations that occur during this process, it
would be helpful to have a model in which tumours develop spontaneously at the primary site, spread to bone,
undergo a dormancy phase and then, after a fixed timeframe, become re-activated to form osteolytic/mixed
lesions in the skeleton. Unlike humans, spontaneous metastasis of primary mammary tumours to bone is rare in
mice and no syngeneic models of oestrogen receptor positive disease have been reported. As there is no single
model that authentically reproduces all of the genetic and phenotypic changes representative of human bone
metastasis, this review discusses the traditional and novel mouse models that are used to study bone metastasis
from breast cancer. Additionally, this review focuses on advances that have been made towards making these
models more closely related to human disease in an attempt to help researchers select the correct model(s) for
their experimental needs with the aim of improving translational efficacy between the laboratory and the clinic.

Keywords: Breast cancer, bone metastasis, mouse models

© The Author(s) 2021. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, sharing,
adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, for any purpose, even commercially, as
long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and
indicate if changes were made.

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