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Gonadotropin-Induced Adrenocortical Neoplasia in NU/J Nude Mice

Departments of Pediatrics (M.B., E.G., M.H., D.B.W.) and Molecular Biology and Pharmacology (I.B., D.B.W.), Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis Children’s Hospital, St. Louis, Missouri 63110; Program for Developmental and Reproductive Biology (H.P., S.K., M.H.), Children’s Hospital, Biomedicum Helsinki, University of Helsinki, 00290 Helsinki, Finland; Department of Physiology (N.R.), Institute of Biomedicine, University of Turku, 20520 Turku, Finland; and Department of Physiology (J.L.), University of Oulu, 90220 Oulu, Finland

Address all correspondence and requests for reprints to: David B. Wilson, M.D., Ph.D., Department of Pediatrics, Box 8208, Washington University School of Medicine, 660 South Euclid Avenue, St. Louis, MO 63110. E-mail: wilson_d{at}wustl.edu.

In response to prepubertal gonadectomy certain inbred mouse strains, including DBA/2J, develop sex steroid-producing adrenocortical neoplasms. This phenomenon has been attributed to a lack of gonadal hormones or a compensatory increase in gonadotropins. To assess the relative importance of these mechanisms, we created a new inbred model of adrenocortical neoplasia using female NU/J nude mice. These mice developed adrenocortical neoplasms in response to either gonadectomy or gonadotropin elevation from xenografts of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG)-secreting Chinese hamster ovary cells. In each instance the adrenal tumors resembled the neoplasms found in gonadectomized DBA/2J mice and were composed of spindle-shaped A cells and lipid-laden B cells. Both cell populations were defined by ectopic expression of GATA-4 and an absence of the adrenocortical markers melanocortin-2-receptor and steroid 21-hydroxylase, but only B cells expressed the gonadal steroidogenic markers inhibin-, LH receptor, P450c17, and P450c19. Expression of sex steroidogenic markers was attenuated in the neoplastic adrenal cortex of hCG-treated vs. gonadectomized mice. Whereas neoplastic adrenals were an obvious source of estradiol in gonadectomized mice, ovaries appeared to be the major source of this hormone in hCG-treated mice. Gonadectomy and hCG treatment elicited comparable increases in serum estradiol, but testosterone levels increased significantly only in hCG-treated mice. We conclude that chronic gonadotropin elevation, caused by either gonadectomy or hCG administration, signals a population of cells in the adrenal subcapsular region of permissive mice to undergo differentiation along a gonadal rather than an adrenal lineage. Thus, NU/J nude mice can be used as a model to study both neoplasia and adrenogonadal lineage specification.

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