Center for Stem Cell Research, Tulane University School of Medicine, New Orleans, LA 70112, USA.
Tulane Brain Institute, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 70118, USA.
Int J Mol Sci. 2019 Mar 20;20(6):1419. doi: 10.3390/ijms20061419.
Adipose stem cells (ASCs) play an essential role in tumor microenvironments. These cells are altered by obesity (obASCs) and previous studies have shown that obASCs secrete higher levels of leptin. Increased leptin, which upregulates estrogen receptor alpha (ERα) and aromatase, enhances estrogen bioavailability and signaling in estrogen receptor positive (ER⁺) breast cancer (BC) tumor growth and metastasis. In this study, we evaluate the effect of obASCs on ER⁺BC outside of the ERα signaling axis using breast cancer models with constitutively active ERα resulting from clinically relevant mutations (Y537S and D538G). We found that while obASCs promote tumor growth and proliferation, it occurs mostly through abrogated estrogen signaling when BC has constitutive ER activity. However, obASCs have a similar promotion of metastasis irrespective of ER status, demonstrating that obASC promotion of metastasis may not be completely estrogen dependent. We found that obASCs upregulate two genes in both ER wild type (WT) and ER mutant (MUT) BC: and . This study demonstrates that obASCs promote metastasis in ER WT and MUT xenografts and an ER MUT patient derived xenograft (PDX) model. However, obASCs promote tumor growth only in ER WT xenografts.
脂肪干细胞 (ASCs) 在肿瘤微环境中发挥着重要作用。这些细胞受到肥胖的影响(obASCs),先前的研究表明 obASCs 分泌更高水平的瘦素。瘦素的增加会上调雌激素受体 alpha (ERα) 和芳香酶,从而增强雌激素受体阳性 (ER⁺) 乳腺癌 (BC) 肿瘤生长和转移中的雌激素生物利用度和信号转导。在这项研究中,我们使用源自临床相关突变 (Y537S 和 D538G) 的具有组成型激活 ERα 的乳腺癌模型,在 ERα 信号轴之外评估 obASCs 对 ER⁺BC 的影响。我们发现,虽然 obASCs 促进肿瘤生长和增殖,但当 BC 具有组成型 ER 活性时,这种作用主要是通过雌激素信号的中断来实现的。然而,obASCs 对转移具有相似的促进作用,而与 ER 状态无关,这表明 obASC 促进转移可能不完全依赖于雌激素。我们发现 obASCs 上调了两种基因在 ER 野生型 (WT) 和 ER 突变型 (MUT) BC 中: 和 。这项研究表明 obASCs 促进了 ER WT 和 MUT 异种移植瘤和 ER MUT 患者来源异种移植瘤 (PDX) 模型的转移。然而,obASCs 仅在 ER WT 异种移植瘤中促进肿瘤生长。