The role of obesity in promoting breast cancer progression.
Conner, Sydney.
2022
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Obesity is a growing pandemic. In women, obesity is a risk factor for the aggressive subtype of breast cancer triple negative breast cancer, higher rates of metastasis, the dissemination of cancer cells to distant organs, and worse overall prognosis. For metastasis to occur breast cancer cells must first invade out from the primary tumor into the local breast tissue then migrate out into the ... read morevasculature to reach distant organs. The primary tumor microenvironment is a known driver of breast cancer progression. Obesity has been shown to cause changes in breast adipose tissue that promote breast cancer progression. A major component of adipose tissue is the extracellular matrix (ECM), which is composed of several hundred individual proteins that provide physical support to cells and signaling molecules that influence cell behavior. We have previously shown that whole decellularized adipose tissue from the mammary fat pads of C57BL/6 fed a high fat diet for 16 weeks compared to lean control promoted breast cancer cell invasion. However, the extent of obesity required to induce these pro-invasive changes in mammary adipose tissue and the role of the obese fat cells (adipocytes) in the breast tissue in regulating ECM production and driving breast cancer cell invasion is not well known. To investigate this, we generated a mouse model of diet induced obesity by feeding female C57BL/6 mice a high fat diet for 4, 8, 12, and 16 weeks. We found that by 8 weeks on HFD functional changes have occurred in the mammary fat pad that promote breast cancer cell invasion. Next, we plan to investigate how duration of high fat diet alters the secretion of proteins by adipocytes in breast tissue and the effect this has on breast cancer cell invasion when co-cultured in 3D collagen constructs.
15-minute talk presented at the Tufts Graduate Student Council's 27th Graduate Student Research Symposium, April 20, 2022, 2nd place winner.read less - Conner, Sydney. "The role of obesity in promoting breast cancer progression." Presentation at the 27th Graduate Research Symposium, Tufts University, April 20, 2022.
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