Ojalvo Laureen S, King William, Cox Dianne, Pollard Jeffrey W
Department of Developmental and Molecular Biology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, 1300 Morris Park Avenue, Bronx, NY 10461, USA.
Am J Pathol. 2009 Mar;174(3):1048-64. doi: 10.2353/ajpath.2009.080676. Epub 2009 Feb 13.
Clinical and experimental evidence indicates that tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) promote malignant progression. In breast cancer, TAMs enhance tumor angiogenesis, tumor cell invasion, matrix remodeling, and immune suppression against the tumor. In this study, we examined late-stage mammary tumors from a transgenic mouse model of breast cancer. We used flow cytometry under conditions that minimized gene expression changes to isolate a rigorously defined TAM population previously shown to be associated with invasive carcinoma cells. The gene expression signature of this population was compared with a similar population derived from spleens of non-tumor-bearing mice using high-density oligonucleotide arrays. Using stringent selection criteria, transcript abundance of 460 genes was shown to be differentially regulated between the two populations. Bioinformatic analyses of known functions of these genes indicated that formerly ascribed TAM functions, including suppression of immune activation and matrix remodeling, as well as multiple mediators of tumor angiogenesis, were elevated in TAMs. Further bioinformatic analyses confirmed that a pure and valid TAM gene expression signature in mouse tumors could be used to assess expression of TAMs in human breast cancer. The data derived from these more physiologically relevant autochthonous tumors compared with previous studies in tumor xenografts suggest tactics by which TAMs may regulate tumor angiogenesis and thus provide a basis for exploring other transcriptional mediators of TAM trophic functions within the tumor microenvironment.
临床和实验证据表明,肿瘤相关巨噬细胞(TAM)可促进恶性进展。在乳腺癌中,TAM可增强肿瘤血管生成、肿瘤细胞侵袭、基质重塑以及对肿瘤的免疫抑制。在本研究中,我们检测了一种乳腺癌转基因小鼠模型的晚期乳腺肿瘤。我们在尽量减少基因表达变化的条件下使用流式细胞术,以分离出先前已证明与浸润性癌细胞相关的严格定义的TAM群体。使用高密度寡核苷酸阵列将该群体的基因表达特征与来自无肿瘤小鼠脾脏的类似群体进行比较。采用严格的筛选标准,结果显示两个群体之间有460个基因的转录本丰度存在差异调节。对这些基因已知功能的生物信息学分析表明,TAM中先前归因的功能,包括免疫激活抑制和基质重塑,以及多种肿瘤血管生成介质,均有所升高。进一步的生物信息学分析证实,小鼠肿瘤中纯净有效的TAM基因表达特征可用于评估人类乳腺癌中TAM的表达。与先前在肿瘤异种移植中的研究相比,来自这些更具生理相关性的原位肿瘤的数据表明了TAM调节肿瘤血管生成的策略,并因此为探索肿瘤微环境中TAM营养功能的其他转录介质提供了基础。