Effects of sex steroids and tamoxifen on VEGF in the breast

7 Abbreviations 10 Introduction 11 Sex steroids and the breast 11 Estrogen and progesterone receptors 12 Angiogenesis and the microenvironment 13 VEGF 15 Tamoxifen and angiogenesis 22 Aims of the present study 23 Comments on Materials and Methods 25 Cell culture, animal models, and human studies 25 Hormone treatment 26 Microdialysis 28 Quantification of VEGF, sVEGFR-1, VEGFR-2 and estradiol 31 Western Blot Analysis 32 Immunohistochemistry 33 Assessment of angiogenesis 34 Statistics 36 Results and Discussion 37 Pro-angiogenic effects of estradiol and anti-angiogenic effects of tamoxifen in the breast 37 Tissue culture 40 Reflections and future aspects 41 Conclusions 43 Acknowledgements 45 References 47 Papers I-IV 65