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Breast cancer associated fibroblasts promote MCF-7 invasion in vitro by secretion of HGF

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Summary

This study was aimed to explore the influence of breast cancer associated fibroblasts (CAFs) in migration and invasion of breast cancer cell line MCF-7, and investigate whether hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) is involved in this process. Primary breast CAFs and their corresponding normal breast fibroblasts (NFs) were obtained by collagenase digestion. On the basis of the co-culture, the migration and invasion capacity of MCF-7 cells was compared between CAFs and NFs by Transwell. The difference in the HGF expression between them was detected by ELISA. The secretion of HGF was knocked down by using RNA interference technology in CAFs. Then the changes of migration and invasion capacity of MCF-7 cells were investigated by Transwell. Eventually, we isolated high-purity CAFs and NFs, and the CAFs had a stronger ability in promoting MCF-7 migration and invasion than the NFs. ELISA results demonstrated that CAFs secreted higher HGF, and the capacity of MCF-7 migration and invasion was declined after knocking down the secretion of HGF in CAFs by RNA interference. It is suggested that CAFs can promote MCF-7 migration and invasion through HGF in vitro.

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Correspondence to Gang Chen  (陈 刚).

Additional information

This project was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81000979; No. 30901584; No. 30801224) and the National Key Basic Research Program Foundation of China (Program 973) (No. 2009CB521800).

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Chen, P., Mo, Q., Wang, B. et al. Breast cancer associated fibroblasts promote MCF-7 invasion in vitro by secretion of HGF. J. Huazhong Univ. Sci. Technol. [Med. Sci.] 32, 92–96 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11596-012-0016-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11596-012-0016-8

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