Department of Medicine, Division of Hematology/Oncology, SUNY Upstate Medical University, 750 E. Adams Street, Syracuse, NY, 13210, USA.
Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine, 250 E Superior, Chicago, IL, 60611, USA.
Virol J. 2017 Oct 13;14(1):196. doi: 10.1186/s12985-017-0862-x.
Conflicting results regarding the association of MMTV with human breast cancer have been reported. Published sequence data have indicated unique MMTV strains in some human samples. However, concerns regarding contamination as a cause of false positive results have persisted.
We performed PCR assays for MMTV on human breast cancer cell lines and fresh frozen and formalin fixed normal and malignant human breast epithelial samples. Assays were also performed on peripheral blood mononuclear cells from volunteer blood donors and subjects at risk for human retroviral infections. In addition, assays were performed on DNA samples from wild and laboratory mice. Sequencing of MMTV positive samples from both humans and mice were performed and phylogenetically compared.
Using PCR under rigorous conditions to prevent and detect "carryover" contamination, we did detect MMTV DNA in human samples, including breast cancer. However, the results were not consistent and seemed to be an artifact. Further, experiments indicated that the probable source of false positives was murine DNA, containing endogenous MMTV, present in our building. However, comparison of published and, herein, newly described MMTV sequences with published data, indicates that there are some very unique human MMTV sequences in the literature.
While we could not confirm the true presence of MMTV in our human breast cancer subjects, the data indicate that further, perhaps more traditional, retroviral studies are warranted to ascertain whether MMTV might rarely be the cause of human breast cancer.
关于 MMTV 与人类乳腺癌的关联，已有相互矛盾的研究结果发表。已公布的序列数据表明，在一些人类样本中存在独特的 MMTV 株。然而，人们一直担心污染可能导致假阳性结果。
我们对人乳腺癌细胞系以及新鲜冷冻和福尔马林固定的正常和恶性人乳腺上皮样本进行了 MMTV 的 PCR 检测。还对志愿者献血者和有人类逆转录病毒感染风险的个体的外周血单核细胞进行了检测。此外，还对野生和实验室小鼠的 DNA 样本进行了检测。对来自人和小鼠的 MMTV 阳性样本进行了测序，并进行了系统发育比较。
采用严格的 PCR 条件来防止和检测“携带”污染，我们确实在人类样本中检测到了 MMTV DNA，包括乳腺癌。然而，结果不一致，似乎是一种假象。此外，实验表明，假阳性的可能来源是我们建筑物中存在的含有内源性 MMTV 的鼠 DNA。然而，将已公布的和本文新描述的 MMTV 序列与已公布的数据进行比较表明，文献中存在一些非常独特的人类 MMTV 序列。
虽然我们无法确认我们的人类乳腺癌患者中确实存在 MMTV，但这些数据表明，需要进一步进行可能更传统的逆转录病毒研究，以确定 MMTV 是否可能很少成为人类乳腺癌的原因。
