Tumor-associated Macrophages Promote Invasion and Metastasis of Breast Cancer by EMT

Abstract: To investigate the mechanism of the tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) promoting invasion and metastasis of breast cancer， TAMs marker CD68， E-cadherin and Vimentin expression were detected in 80 invasive ductal carcinoma specimens by immunohistochemistry. The positive rate of CD68 in invasive ductal carcinomas was significantly higher than that in normal breast tissue. The expression of CD68 was significantly associated with tumor differentiation and lymph node metastasis and was negatively correlated with E-cadherin expression while it was positively correlated with Vimentin expression. TAMs were separated from fresh invasive ductal carcinoma tissue and were confirmed by immunofluorescence. After being cultured in TAMs-conditioned medium， the MCF-7 cells morphological changed， the results of Transwell assay showed the invasion and metastasis ability of cells were obviously increased， and the results of Western blot showed that the expression of E-cadherin was significantly down-regulated and the expression of Vimentin was significantly up-regulated. The conclusion is that TAMs are closely related to invasion and metastasis of breast cancer and promoted MCF-7 cells invasion and metastasis by inducing EMT.

CSTR: 32200.14.cjcb.2013.05.0008