Breast Cancer: Understanding Different Types of Cells in Breast Tissue

First Posted: Mar 06, 2014 01:27 PM EST
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A recent study lead by researcher Charolette Kuperwasser looked to determine some of the common forms of breast cancer and how they originate. The findings showed that breast cancer cells often original from luminal cells where rarer forms of breast cancer can also form via basal cells.

Breast tissues is composed of two main types of cells: luminal cells, which are normally "programmed" by a particular class of protein transcription factors that help prevent them from turning into basal cells--otherwise known as slow-growing forms of skin cancer.

As normal breast tissue cells can become unpredictable or even aggressive and thus difficult to treat with anti-cancer drugs for an individual suffering from breast cancer, researchers hoped to better understand how different types of cells in the tissue develop or improve based on the identification of the gene TAZ, which could potentially help with a new target for drug therapies to treat aggressive types of breast cancer.

As the research team identified the TAZ gene, which controls how breast cancer cells behave as luminal or basal cells, they discovered that it can also help regulate how different genes operate in different cell types.

For the study, researchers identified TAZ by testing the function of more than 1,000 genes in order to determine which were involved in "reprogramming" luminal and basal cells, along with the possibilities of reversing that lineage.

They also studied breast tissue at several different stages of development by looking at two groups of mice: a control group with the gene and an experimental control group in which the TAZ gene was deleted. Lastly, TAZ gene levels were assessed in women with either luminal or basal tumors, as well.

Results showed that an imbalance of cell populations was found in breast tissue among the experimental group, with too many luminal cells and too few basal ones. However, the control group had a normal ration of luminal to basal cells. For women with breast cancer, high levels of TAZ were found in basal cells but not in luminal tumors.

"We've known for a long time that breast cells can lose their normal identity when they become cancerous, but we are now realizing that normal cells can change their characteristics as well in response to transcription factors like TAZ," said first study author Adam Skibinski, M.D./Ph.D., a student at Tufts University School of Medicine and the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at Tufts Unviersity, via a press release. "This might be a factor in the development of breast cancer."

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More information regarding the study can be found via the journal Cell Reports

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