Journal article

+ 1 other files

TGFBI modulates tumour hypoxia and promotes breast cancer metastasis

  • Fico, Flavia Tumor Ecology Lab Department of Oncology, Microbiology and Immunology Faculty of Science and Medicine University of Fribourg Switzerland
  • Santamaria‐Martínez, Albert Tumor Ecology Lab Department of Oncology, Microbiology and Immunology Faculty of Science and Medicine University of Fribourg Switzerland
    16.10.2020
Published in:
  • Molecular Oncology. - 2020, vol. 14, no. 12, p. 3198–3210
English Breast cancer metastasis is a complex process that depends not only on intrinsic characteristics of metastatic stem cells, but also on the particular microenvironment that supports their growth and modulates the plasticity of the system. In search for microenvironmental factors supporting cancer stem cell (CSC) growth and tumour progression to metastasis, we here investigated the role of the matricellular protein transforming growth factor beta induced (TGFBI) in breast cancer. We crossed the MMTV‐PyMT model of mammary gland tumorigenesis with a TgfbiΔ/Δ mouse and studied the CSC content of the tumours. We performed RNAseq on wt and ko tumours, and analysed the tumour vasculature and the immune compartment by IHC and FACS. The source of TGFBI expression was determined by qPCR and by bone marrow transplantation experiments. Finally, we performed in silico analyses using the METABRIC cohort to assess the potential prognostic value of TGFBI. We observed that deletion of Tgfbi led to a dramatic decrease in CSC content and lung metastasis. Our results show that lack of TGFBI resulted in tumour vessel normalisation, with improved vessel perfusion and decreased hypoxia, a major factor controlling CSCs and metastasis. Furthermore, human data mining in a cohort of breast cancer patients showed that higher expression of TGFBI correlates with poor prognosis and is associated with the more aggressive subtypes of breast cancer. Overall, these data reveal a novel biological mechanism controlling metastasis that could potentially be exploited to improve the efficacy and delivery of chemotherapeutic agents in breast cancer.
Faculty
Faculté des sciences et de médecine
Department
Médecine 3ème année
Language
  • English
Classification
Biological sciences
License
License undefined
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/309051
Other files

Statistics

Document views: 37 File downloads:
  • san_tmt.pdf: 53
  • san_tmt_sm.pdf: 24