The Second Affiliated Hospital and Yuying Children's Hospital, Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou 325035, PR China.
Institute of Environmental Safety and Human Health, Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou 325035, PR China.
Aging (Albany NY). 2021 Apr 20;13(8):11762-11773. doi: 10.18632/aging.202870.
Aging plays an important role in many diseases, including breast cancer. Aged mammary stem/progenitor cells are perceived to be the cells of origin in breast tumorigenesis; however, the extensive use of mice who have aged naturally for research is hampered by cost, time, disease complications, and high mortality. In this study, we characterized murine mammary stem/progenitor cells in a D-galactose-induced accelerated aging model and compared them with findings from our earlier study on mice from natural aging. Our results showed that mammary glands in the D-galactose-induced aging model mimic natural aging in terms of pathological changes, epithelial cell composition, and mammary stem/progenitor cell function. These changes are accompanied by elevated inflammatory responses both systemically in the blood and locally in the mammary glands, which is similar in mice who age naturally. Our study for the first time evaluated the mammary glands and mammary stem/progenitor function in a D-galactose-induced aging model in rodents, and our findings suggest that D-galactose treatment can be used as a surrogate to study the role aged stem/progenitor cells play in breast tumorigenesis.
衰老是许多疾病的重要因素，包括乳腺癌。衰老的乳腺干/祖细胞被认为是乳腺肿瘤发生的起始细胞；然而，广泛使用自然衰老的小鼠进行研究受到成本、时间、疾病并发症和高死亡率的限制。在这项研究中，我们在 D-半乳糖诱导的加速衰老模型中对鼠乳腺干/祖细胞进行了特征描述，并将其与我们之前对自然衰老小鼠的研究结果进行了比较。我们的结果表明，D-半乳糖诱导的衰老模型中的乳腺在病理变化、上皮细胞组成和乳腺干/祖细胞功能方面模拟了自然衰老。这些变化伴随着全身性血液和局部乳腺中炎症反应的增加，这与自然衰老的小鼠相似。我们的研究首次在啮齿动物的 D-半乳糖诱导衰老模型中评估了乳腺和乳腺干/祖细胞功能，我们的发现表明，D-半乳糖处理可以用作研究衰老的干/祖细胞在乳腺癌发生中的作用的替代方法。
