Stromal influences on breast cancer cell growth

Abstract

Paracrine influences from fibroblasts derived from different sources of breast tissue on epithelial breast cancer cell growth in vitro were investigated. Medium conditioned (CM) by fibroblasts derived from tumours, adjacent normal breast tissue, and normal breast tissue obtained from reduction mammoplasty or from skin tissue significantly stimulated the growth of the steroid-receptor positive cell lines MCF-7 and ZR 75.1. The proliferation index (PI) on MCF-7 cells with CM from fibroblasts derived from breast tumour tissue was significantly higher than that obtained with fibroblasts derived from adjacent normal breast tissue (2p less than 0.05, n = 8). The PI obtained with CM from normal fibroblast cultures from reduction mammoplasty tissue, like normal tissue adjacent to the tumour, fell in the lower range of values. Skin fibroblast, like tumour tissue derived fibroblast, CM caused a high range PI. MDA-MB-231 and Evsa-T, two steroid-receptor negative cell lines, showed only a minor growth stimulatory responses with some of the fibroblast CM's. Evsa-T was occasionally inhibited by CM's. In conclusion, stromal factors play a role in the growth regulation of human breast cancer cells. The effects on cancer cell growth are, however, varying depending on the source of the stroma and the characteristics of the epithelial tumour cells.

Human Breast Fibroblasts Inhibit Growth of the MCF10AT Xenograft Model of Proliferative Breast Disease

“…7 Multiple studies have demonstrated that CAFs have a stronger growth-promoting effect on normal or cancerous breast epithelial cells than NAFs. [31][32][33][34][35][36] Overall, these previous results support our findings indicating that NAFs inhibit the growth of normal or hyperplastic epithelium, but are, in general, less able to alter the growth of cancer epithelial cells.…”

The MTT Tetrazolium Salt Assay Scrutinized: How to Use this Assay Reliably to Measure Metabolie Activity of Cell Cultures in vitro for the Assessment of Growth Characteristics, IC50-Values and Cell Survival

“…Providing that the absorbance values are within the (seemingly) linear part of the curve of cells counted versus absorbance, relative responses between two cultures can be determined by comparing their "fraction of the absorbance values of the control cultures" or by comparing their proliferation index (24). Furthermore, the MTT assay can be used as an alternative to the clonogenic assay (4).…”

Short-term primary culture of epithelial cells derived from human breast tumours

“…It has been proposed that, in vivo, tumour epithelial cells may have an absolute dependence on paracrine signals from neighbouring cells (Lippmann et al, 1989;Osborne and Arteaga, 1990). This is reinforced by in vitro studies that showed paracrine factors secreted by breast tumour-derived fibroblasts or lymphocytes stimulated proliferation of breast cancer cell lines (Adams et al, 1988b;van Roozendaal et al, 1992) and primary cultures of breast cancer epithelial (Ogmundsdottir et al, 1993;Hofland et al, 1995;Emerman et al, 1996). Thus, paracrine-autocrine interactions are likely to be important factors in determining the biological behaviour of a tumour.…”