The present invention embraces a transgenic mouse whose genome harbors a nucleic acid molecule encoding caveolin-1 fused in-frame with a reporter. To control expression of the Cav1-reporter, the nucleic acid molecule further includes a selectable marker expression cassette flanked by recombinase target sites in such a manner that, upon exposure to recombinase, said selectable marker expression cassette is excised from said nucleic acid molecule.
