Drosophila as a cancer model

Abstract

Over the last few decades, Drosophila cancer models have made great contributions to our understanding toward fundamental cancer processes. Particularly, the development of genetic mosaic technique in Drosophila has enabled us to recapitulate basic aspects of human cancers, including clonal evolution, tumor microenvironment, cancer cachexia, and anticancer drug resistance. The mosaic technique has also led to the discovery of important tumor-suppressor pathways such as the Hippo pathway and the elucidation of the mechanisms underlying tumor growth and metastasis via regulation of cell polarity, cell-cell cooperation, and cell competition. Recent approaches toward identification of novel therapeutics using fly cancer models have further proved Drosophila as a robust system with great potentials for cancer research as well as anti-cancer therapy.