The loss of E-cadherin expression leads to absence of tissue integrity, an essential step in tumor progression. Methylation of CpG islands in the promoter region of the CDH1 gene coding E-cadherin might be an alternative for gene silencing. In the present study, we investigate the expression of E-cadherin and hormone ...

MAP17 is a small, 17-kDa, non-glycosylated membrane protein that is overexpressed in a percentage of carcinomas. In the present work, we have analyzed the role of MAP17 expression during mammary cancer progression. We have found that MAP17 is expressed in 60% human mammary tumors while it is not expressed in ...

The present study examined the effect of dietary genistein, a soy isoflavone, on breast cancer patients who take tamoxifen, an antiestrogen treatment, using a pre-clinical model. The interaction of various doses of genistein with tamoxifen on the growth of estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer MCF-7 cells was investigated by subcutaneously injecting ...

ABSTRACT: INTRODUCTION: Although breast cancers expressing estrogen receptor-alpha (ERalpha) and progesterone receptors (PR) are the most common form of mammary malignancy in humans, it has been difficult to develop a suitable mouse model showing similar steroid hormone responsiveness. STAT transcription factors play critical roles in mammary gland tumorigenesis, but the ...

Primary extragastrointestinal stromal tumors (EGISTs) arising in the pancreas are extremely rare, with only ten cases documented to our knowledge. We report a further case of EGIST of the pancreas. The patient was a 55-year-old man who presented with postprandial abdominal discomfort. Abdominal computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging showed ...

Although surgical resection with adjuvant chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy are used to treat breast tumors, normal tissue tolerance, development of metastases, and inherent tumor resistance to radiation or chemotherapy can hinder a successful outcome. We have developed a thermally responsive polypeptide, based on the sequence of Elastin-like polypeptide (ELP), that inhibits ...

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: The study of breast cancer metastasis depends on the use of established breast cancer cell lines that do not accurately represent the heterogeneity and complexity of human breast tumors. A tumor model was developed using primary breast tumor-initiating cells isolated from patient core biopsies that would more accurately ...

BACKGROUND: The receptor tyrosine kinase EphA2 is overexpressed in several types of cancers and is currently being pursued as a target for breast cancer therapeutics. The EphA2 ligand EphrinA1 induces EphA2 phosphorylation and intracellular internalization and degradation, thus inhibiting tumor progression. The hematopoietic growth factor, FMS-like tyrosine kinase receptor ligand ...

ABSTRACT: INTRODUCTION: Over-expression of the oxygen-responsive transcription factor hypoxia inducible factor (HIF)-1alpha correlates with poor prognosis in breast cancer patients. The MMTV-PyMT (polyoma virus middle T) mouse is a widely utilized pre-clinical mouse model that resembles luminal breast cancer and is highly metastatic. Prior studies in the PyMT model demonstrated ...

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: The receptor tyrosine kinase family includes many transmembrane proteins with diverse physiological and pathophysiological functions. The involvement of tyrosine kinase signaling in promoting a more aggressive tumor phenotype within the context of chemotherapeutic evasion is gaining recognition. The Ron receptor is a tyrosine kinase receptor that has been ...

Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is the important angiogenic factor associated with tumor growth and metastasis in a wide variety of solid tumors. The aim of this study is to investigate the tumor suppressive effect of chitosan/small interfering RNA (siRNA)-VEGF nanoplexes in the rat breast cancer model. Chitosan/siRNA nanoplexes (siVEGF-A, ...

Objective: CD117 and CD34 are markers that have both been implied in cancer progression in adult breast lesions. This study was conducted in order to create a retrospective documentation and to analyze the expression patterns of these markers on childhood benign lesions along with a comparison with adult breast lesions' ...

We investigated the effects of the matrix metalloproteinase 13 (MMP13)-selective inhibitor, 5-(4-{4-[4-(4-fluorophenyl)-1,3-oxazol-2-yl]phenoxy}phenoxy)-5-(2-methoxyethyl) pyrimidine-2,4,6(1H,3H,5H)-trione (Cmpd-1), on the primary tumor growth and breast cancer-associated bone remodeling using xenograft and syngeneic mouse models. We used human breast cancer MDA-MB-231 cells inoculated into the mammary fat pad and left ventricle of BALB/c Nu/Nu mice, ...

INTRODUCTION: Patients with primary breast cancer (PBC) are at 2 to 6 times higher risk for developing synchronous and metachronous breast cancer (MBC). The pathology and behavior of MBC still remains unclear. METHODS: We reviewed the charts of 108 women with MBC at our hospital over the past 10 years. ...

Solid-pseudopapillary tumors of the pancreas (SPTs) are comparatively rare and have low malignancy, with a predilection for young women. Diagnosis is difficult when a SPT develops in a boundary region with other organs. Here, we report a 42-year old woman with a SPT of the pancreas mimicking a submucosal tumor ...

PURPOSE: To explore tumor pathophysiology with special attention to the microenvironment in two molecular subtypes of human breast cancer using in vivo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and histopathology. The impact of tumor growth, size, and the influence of estradiol were also investigated. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Two orthotopic and directly transplanted ...

BRCA1 is a crucial human breast and ovarian cancer tumor suppressor gene. The article by Drost et al. in this issue of Cancer Cell together with a recent paper in Science now provide a clearer picture of how this large and complex protein suppresses tumorigenesis.

S100A7/Psoriasin, a member of the epidermal differentiation complex, is widely overexpressed in invasive ER-negative (ERα-) breast cancers. However, it has not been established whether S100A7 contributes to breast cancer growth or metastasis. Here, we report the consequences of its expression on inflammatory pathways that impact breast cancer growth. Overexpression of ...

ABSTRACT: INTRODUCTION: CXCL12-CXCR4 signaling has been shown to play a role in breast cancer progression by enhancing tumor growth, angiogenesis, triggering cancer cell invasion in vitro, and guiding cancer cells to their sites of metastasis. However, CXCR7 also binds to CXCL12 and has been recently found to enhance lung and ...

Primary breast sarcomas (PBSs) that arise from mammary stroma are very rare, highly aggressive and therapy- resistant tumors with a heterogeneous phenotype. In this study, we sought to identify tumor-initiating cells (TICs) in PBSs and to describe their features. We isolated long-term self-renewing sarcospheres (designated NDY-1) from primary breast carcinosarcoma ...

Tumor vasculature is known to express high levels of the longest splice variant of tumor endothelial marker 8 (TEM8). Little is known about its expression by tumor cells. Five of eight cell breast cancer cell lines tested expressed significant levels of the longest TEM8 splice variant (TEM8.1), and to a ...

Lin28A and Lin28B selectively block the expression of let-7 microRNAs and function as oncogenes in a variety of human cancers. Lin28A recruits a TUTase (Zcchc11/TUT4) to let-7 precursors to block processing by Dicer in the cell cytoplasm. Here we find that unlike Lin28A, Lin28B represses let-7 processing through a Zcchc11-independent mechanism. Lin28B ...

A series of 7-substituted coumarins incorporating various glycosyl moieties were synthesized and investigated for the inhibition of the zinc enzyme carbonic anhydrase (CA, EC 4.2.1.1). These coumarins were very weak or ineffective as inhibitors of the housekeeping, offtarget isoforms CA I and II, but some of them inhibited the tumor-associated ...

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have been considered to be the attractive vehicles for delivering therapeutic agents toward various tumor diseases. This study was to explore the distribution pattern, kinetic delivery of adenovirus, and therapeutic efficacy of the MSC loading of E1A mutant conditionally replicative adenovirus Adv-Stat3(-) which selectively ...

We developed a three-dimensional assay prepared from primary breast cancer tissue and quantified tumor response to tamoxifen therapy. Freshly harvested breast cancer biopsies obtained at the time of curative surgical resection were fragmented and embedded into collagen I cushions. Changes in proliferation, apoptosis and tumor volume in response to tamoxifen ...

The increasingly widespread use of immunohistochemistry in the detection of DNA mismatch repair proteins has led to the observation of various unusual tumor types that occur in Lynch syndrome and exhibit mismatch repair protein deficiency. Understanding the clinical significance of such unusual tumors has become increasingly desirable. Here, we report ...

Histological overexpression of the estrogen receptor α (ER) is a well established prognostic marker in breast cancer. Non-invasive imaging techniques that could detect ER overexpression would be useful in a variety of settings where patient's biopsies are problematic to obtain. This study focused on developing by in vivo magnetic resonance ...

Both high and low molecular weight hyaluronan (HMW-HA vs. LMW-HA) exist in various tissues and cells. In this study we investigated LMW-HA-mediated CD44 interaction with Toll-like receptors (TLRs), the actin filament-associated protein (AFAP-110) and a myeloid differentiation factor (MyD88) in breast tumor cells (MDA-MB-231 cells). Our data indicate that LMW-HA ...

ABSTRACT: Tumor cell dissemination in bone marrow or other organs is thought to represent an important step in the metastatic process. The detection of bone marrow disseminated tumor cells is associated with worse outcome in early breast cancer. Moreover, the detection of peripheral blood circulating tumor cells is an adverse ...

Development and preclinical testing of new cancer therapies is limited by the scarcity of in vivo models that authentically reproduce tumor growth and metastatic progression. We report new models for breast tumor growth and metastasis in the form of transplantable tumors derived directly from individuals undergoing treatment for breast cancer. ...

Estrogen receptor negative (ER(-ve)) and p53 mutant breast tumors are highly aggressive and have fewer treatment options. Previously, we showed that molecular Iodine (I(2)) induces apoptosis in hormone responsive MCF-7 breast cancer cells, and non-apoptotic cell death in ER(-ve)-p53 mutant MDA-MB231 cells (Shrivastava, 2009). Here we show that I(2) (3μM) ...

Resistance to endocrine therapy is a major complication of luminal breast cancer and studies of the biological features of hormonal resistance are limited by the lack of adequate preclinical models. The aim of this study is to establish and characterize a panel of primary human luminal breast carcinoma xenografts, and ...

OBJECTIVE: to describe the gray-scale and color Doppler ultrasound features of metastatic ovarian tumors according to the origin of the primary tumor in a large study population, also in relationship with some clinical and biochemical features. METHODS: Retrospective analysis of 116 masses in 92 patients (mean age: 51 years) evaluated ...

Thomsen-Friedenreich (TF) antigen is a disaccharide, galactose β1-3 N-acetylgalactosamine (Galβ1-3GalNAc), expressed on the cell surfaces of most human carcinomas including breast. In this study, we synthesized and evaluated the in vitro and in vivo properties of a (64)Cu-radiolabeled TF antigen-specific peptide derived from bacteriophage display for the purpose of breast ...

Background/Aim: Tumor endothelial marker 8 (TEM8) is a tumor endothelial-associated antigen that is having an increasingly recognized role in tumor biology. The expression of TEM8 in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) has not yet been characterized. We hypothesize that TEM8 is overexpressed in TNBC and in metastatic TNBC in lymph nodes ...

We sought to determine if there was a difference in outcomes in African-American compared with Caucasian women with hormone-responsive breast cancer, and whether this was related to race or other tumor and treatment variables. We included 1,205 patients with hormone-responsive breast cancer were identified in the Kentucky Cancer Registry (1996-2007). ...

Breast cancer is a heterogeneous disease. There is a high degree of diversity between and within tumors as well as among cancer-bearing individuals, and all of these factors together determine the risk of disease progression and therapeutic resistance. Advances in technologies such as whole-genome sequencing and functional viability screens now ...

Breast cancer, rather than constituting a monolithic entity, comprises heterogeneous tumors with different clinical characteristics, disease courses, and responses to specific treatments. Tumor-intrinsic features, including classical histological and immunopathological classifications as well as more recently described molecular subtypes, separate breast tumors into multiple groups. Tumor-extrinsic features, including microenvironmental configuration, also ...

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: The CD44 cell adhesion molecule is aberrantly expressed in many breast tumors and has been implicated in the metastatic process as well as in the putative cancer stem cell (CSC) compartment. We aimed to investigate potential associations between alternatively spliced isoforms of CD44 and CSCs as well as ...

Treatment with aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) agonists can slow or reverse the growth of primary mammary tumors in rodents, which has fostered interest in developing selective AhR modulators (SAhRMs) for treatment of breast cancer. However, the major goal of breast cancer therapy is to inhibit metastasis, the primary cause of ...

Few therapeutic strategies exist for the treatment of metastatic tumor cells in the brain because the blood-brain barrier (BBB) limits drug access. Thus the identification of molecular targets and accompanying BBB permeable drugs will significantly benefit brain metastasis patients. Polo-like kinase 1 (Plk1) is an attractive molecular target because it ...

Tumor progression is intrinsically tied to the clonal selection of tumor cells with acquired phenotypes allowing to cope with a hostile microenvironment. Hypoxia-inducible factors (HIFs) master the transcriptional response to local tissue hypoxia, a hallmark of solid tumors. Here, we report significantly longer patient survival in breast cancer with high ...

ABSTRACT: INTRODUCTION: Protein tyrosine kinases (PTKs) are frequently overexpressed and/or activated in human malignancies, and regulate cancer cell proliferation, cellular survival, and migration. As such, they have become promising molecular targets for new therapies. The non-receptor PTK termed breast tumor kinase (Brk/PTK6) is overexpressed in ~86% of human breast tumors. ...

OBJECTIVE:: Ospemifene, a new drug indicated for the treatment of vulvovaginal atrophy, has completed phase III clinical trials. A condition affecting millions of women worldwide, vulvovaginal atrophy has long been treated with estrogen therapy. Estrogen treatment carries with it risks of thromboembolism, endometrial proliferative effects, and breast cancer promotion. In ...

Comment on: Witkiewicz AK, et al. Cell Cycle 2011; 10:1794-809.

BackgroundNischarin (encoded by NISCH), an α5 integrin-binding protein, has been identified as a regulator of breast cancer cell invasion. We hypothesized that it might be a tumor suppressor and were interested in its regulation.MethodsWe examined nischarin expression in approximately 300 human breast cancer and normal tissues using quantitative polymerase chain ...

Tumor vessels abundantly express receptors for vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), despite treatment with conventional or antiangiogenic drugs. We wished to determine whether the high levels of VEGF receptor (VEGFR) within the tumor vasculature could be leveraged for intracellular delivery of therapeutically significant doses of scVEGF/(177)Lu, a novel radiopharmaceutical based ...

A granular cell tumor of breast is a rare and usually benign tumor originating from Schwann cells. The mammographic and sonographic appearances of a granular cell tumor pose a diagnostic dilemma because of its similarity to breast malignancy. We describe 2 cases of breast granular cell tumors in male patients, ...

BACKGROUND: Primary breast cancers that overexpress human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 have variable biological features and clinical outcomes. A subgroup of HER2-overexpressing tumors that express basal-like immunohistochemical markers-the so-called basal-HER2+ subtype-is associated with poor prognosis. We investigated the clinical relevance of this basal-HER2+ subtype within HER2-overexpressing breast tumors. METHODS: ...

Expression of ADAM12 is low in most normal tissues, but is markedly increased in numerous human cancers, including breast carcinomas. We have previously shown that overexpression of ADAM12 accelerates tumor progression in a mouse model of breast cancer (PyMT). In the present study, we found that ADAM12 deficiency reduces breast ...