Gene expression profiles of epithelial cells microscopically isolated from a breast-invasive ductal carcinoma and a nodal metastasis.
Expression profiles of breast carcinomas are difficult to interpret when they are obtained from tissue in toto, which may contain a large proportion of non-cancer cells. To avoid this problem, we microscopically isolated cells from a primary invasive ductal carcinoma of the breast and from an axillary node harboring a metastatic breast carcinoma, to obtain pure populations of carcinoma cells ( approximately 500) and used them for serial analysis of gene expression. The expression profiles generated from both populations of cells were compared with the profile of a disease-free mammary epithelium. We showed that the expression profiles obtained are exclusive of carcinoma cells with no contribution of non-epithelial cells. From a total of 16,939 unique tags analyzed, we detected 559 statistically significant changes in gene expression; some of these genes have not been previously associated with breast cancer. We observed that many of the down-regulated genes are the same in both cancers, whereas the up-regulated genes are completely different, suggesting that the down-regulation of a set of genes may be the basic mechanism of cancer formation, while the up-regulation may characterize and possibly control the state of evolution of individual cancers. The results obtained may help in characterizing the neoplastic process of breast cancer.
Zucchi
I
I
Istituto di Tecnologie Biomediche, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Via F. lli Cervi 93, 20090 Segrate-Milan, Italy. ileana.zucchi@itb.cnr.it
Mento
E
E
Kuznetsov
V A
VA
Scotti
M
M
Valsecchi
V
V
Simionati
B
B
Vicinanza
E
E
Valle
G
G
Pilotti
S
S
Reinbold
R
R
Vezzoni
P
P
Albertini
A
A
Dulbecco
R
R
D001940:Breast / Q000378:metabolism; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000235:genetics* / Q000473:pathology*; D002277:Carcinoma / Q000235:genetics / Q000473:pathology*; D018076:DNA, Complementary / Q000378:metabolism; D015536:Down-Regulation; D004847:Epithelial Cells / Q000378:metabolism*; D004848:Epithelium / Q000378:metabolism; D015972:Gene Expression Regulation, Neoplastic; D015723:Gene Library; D006801:Humans; D017403:In Situ Hybridization; D008207:Lymphatic Metastasis; D015854:Up-Regulation
D018076:DNA, Complementary