Immmunophenotype of Spontaneous Hematolymphoid Tumors Occurring in Young and Aging Female CD-1 Mice

A few reports indicated the incidence of hematolymphoid neoplasms in old CD-1 mice, but the cellular lineage of CD-1 mouse neoplasms has not been published. In this study, immunohistochemistry (IHC) was used to characterize the cellular lineage of spontaneous hematolymphoid neoplasms arising in 24 young female CD-1 mice used as health-monitoring sentinels and 32 aging female CD-1 mice used as controls in 80-week carcinogenesis studies. Lymphoblastic lymphomas of T-cell and B-cell lineage were common in mice aged 12 months or less, whereas a wide range of non-lymphoblastic B-cell lymphomas and lymphoblastic B-cell lymphomas were common in mice >12-mo-old. Renal hyaline droplets positive for lysozyme were observed in aged mice with a histiocytic-associated large B-cell lymphoma (HA-BCL) and a myeloid leukemia. Endogenous ecotropic mouse leukemia virus (MuLV) genes have been recovered from CD-1 mice, but MuLV protein expression has not been previously demonstrated. We reported for the first time the expression of a MuLV protein p30 by IHC in lymphomas and some normal tissues of both young and aging CD-1 mice. This report should help to differentiate spontaneous lymphomas and leukemias in CD-1 mice from those induced by chemicals and other methods.