Jacqueline Lees Jacqueline Lees holds the lowly mouse in high regard. It is “beautifully developed” as a model system for cancer. Lees says that while researchers can learn much from cells in a Petri dish, they require living organisms to observe, for instance, the interplay of immune system and tumor cells, or how malignancies recruit new blood vessels to feed themselves. Because scientists now understand how to switch genes on and off to promote mutations in cells and specific cancers, Lees and other researchers can trigger the growth of malignancies in mice, to explore methodically the disease’s progression from first mutation through metastasis. They also test new cancer detection methods and potential therapies. The point, says Lees, is to “always ask if our understanding can be applied to human disease.” Lees discusses how researchers have learned to induce both hereditary-type cancers and sporadic (non-familial) cancers, through a range of...