Curcumin Inhibits TGF-β1-Induced MMP -9 and Invasion MDA-MB-231 Cells through ERK, Smad Signaling

Breast cancer is one of most common malignant tumor in global female. And the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in breast cancer patients is cancer metastases, but not the primary tumor (Porter, 2009; Sanchez-Zamorano et al., 2011). It has been demonstrated that tumor cell invasion is the key event in the metastatic steps (Geiger et al., 2009). However, recent studies show that cancer progression toward metastasis is not entirely dependent on tumor cells themselves, but the result of the interactions of tumor cells and the primary tumor microenvironment (Allen et al., 2011). Cancer cells, specially those at the edges of the tumor, can attract and stimulate host cells to secret many kinds of factors (TGF-β1, IL-1, TNF-α, etc.) in the tumor microenvironment. Those factors can generate a series of invasion-related biological effects through the tumor cell signal transduction pathways, and then cause the cells to separate from the primary lesion focus and result in local invasion and distant mestastasis finally (Allen et al., 2011). So far, novel findings indicates that TGF-β1 is one of the factors which could be highly