2015/09/16

Cellular and molecular heterogeneity in breast cancer

Breast cancer is a very heterogeneous disease. We now know that breast tumors contain cells with properties of stem cells (cancer stem cells, CSCs) that support tumor initiation and resistance to current therapies. Furthermore, the heterogeneous nature of breast cancer is a result of intrinsic tumor complexity and also of the tumor microenvironment, which is hypoxic.

A new study has found that hypoxic conditions increase breast stem/progenitor cell populations both in primary normal and tumor breast epithelial cells. This work shows that hypoxic conditions expand CSC populations using distinct molecular mechanisms. These findings are relevant because they suggest that potential combinations of current therapies with CSC-targeting drugs should take into account the remarkable heterogeneity of the CSC subpopulations.

This work has been carried out by the group of Maria dM Vivanco, a Group Leader at CIC bioGUNE, in collaboration with the group of Edurne Berra, also at CIC bioGUNE, and the teams of Iñaki Zabalza and José Antonio López-Ruiz, working at Hospital Galdakao-Usansolo and PreteImagen (Bilbao), respectively.