It is not well understood how paracrine communication between basal and luminal cell populations in the mammary gland affects tumorigenesis. During ErbB2-induced mammary tumorigenesis, enriched mammary stem cells that represent a subpopulation of basal cells exhibit enhanced tumorigenic capacity compared with the corresponding luminal progenitors. Transcript profiling of tumors derived from bas...

The presence of copy number variants in normal genomes poses a challenge to identify small genuine somatic copy number changes in high-resolution cancer genome profiling studies due to the use of unpaired reference DNA. Another problem is the well-known rearrangements of immunoglobulin and T-cell receptor genes in lymphocytes (a commonly used reference), which may misdirect the researcher to a ...

Transcriptome Analysis of Mammary Gland Tissue to Identify Major Genes Involved in the Milk Production

SUMMARY The technique of autoradiognaphy of immunoelectro phonetic patterns was used to study sites of synthesis of mammary tumor virus group-specific antigen (MTV-sl) and munine leukemia virus group-specific antigen (MuL V. gsl) protein in C3H and AKR mice ofvanious ages. Synthesis of MTV-sI protein was seen only in the mam mary gland of tumor-free late pregnant and lactating C3H mice. In addi...

The role of homozygous ataxia telangiectasia mutated (ATM) mutations in familial and sporadic forms of cancer is well established, but the contribution of ATM heterozygosity to mammary gland and other cancers has been controversial. To test the effect of Atm heterozygosity on mammary gland cancer, mice with complete loss of exon 11 of Brca1 specifically in mammary epithelium (Brca1-MG-Deltaex11...

AIM We describe the development of a highly-invasive, triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) variant using serial orthotopic implantation of MDA-MB-231 human breast cancer in nude mice. MATERIALS AND METHODS MDA-MB-231 cells expressing red fluorescent protein (RFP) (1×10(7) cells/site) were initially injected subcutaneously in the flank of nude mice. After the subcutaneous tumors grew, they wer...

Abnormal regulation of apoptosis and cell proliferation is thought to be involved in tumor formation. The secreted Frizzled-related protein 2 (SFRP2) was detected in primary culture of canine mammary gland tumors but not in normal mammary tissues. Thus, to elucidate the role of SFRP2 in mammary tumorigenesis, we overexpressed SFRP2 in mammary gland tumor and MCF7 cells. The results indicated th...

We have, using spin-echo nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, measured the relaxation times and diffusion coefficient of water protons in primary mammary adenocarcinomas of mice. In our biological model, three morphological stages were defined: (a) mammary gland tissue from pregnant mice, (b) preneoplastic nodules, and (c) neoplastic tissue. It was found that neoplastic tissues could be dis...

Transforming growth factor (TGF)-beta1 and TGF-beta3 are normally expressed at high levels in the mammary gland during quiescence and at all stages of development, except lactation. Exogenously added TGF-beta1, -beta2, and -beta3 have been shown to regulate growth and differentiation of mammary epithelial cells in vitro and in vivo. TGF-betas signal through a heteromeric complex of type I and t...

To study the mechanism of beta1-integrin function in vivo, we have generated transgenic mouse expressing a dominant negative mutant of beta1-integrin under the control of mouse mammary tumor virus (MMTV) promoter (MMTV-beta1-cyto). Mammary glands from MMTV-beta1-cyto transgenic females present significant growth defects during pregnancy and lactation and impaired differentiation of secretory ep...