Mouse mammary tumor virus

Mouse mammary tumor virus (MMTV) is a milk-transmitted retrovirus like the HTL viruses, HI viruses, and BLV. It belongs to the genus Betaretrovirus. MMTV was formerly known as Bittner virus, and previously the "milk factor", referring to the extra-chromosomal vertical transmission of murine breast cancer by adoptive nursing, demonstrated in 1936, by John Joseph Bittner while working at the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine. Bittner established the theory that a cancerous agent, or "milk factor", could be transmitted by cancerous mothers to young mice from a virus in their mother's milk. The majority of mammary tumors in mice are caused by mouse mammary tumor virus.