Metastatic Breast Cancer, Organotropism and Therapeutics: A Review

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ajaz Ahmad Waza ◽  
Najeebul Tarfeen ◽  
Sabhiya Majid ◽  
Yasmeena Hassan ◽  
Rashid Mir ◽  
...  

: The final stage of breast cancer involves spreading breast cancer cells to the vital organs like the brain, liver lungs and bones in the process called metastasis. Once the target organ is overtaken by the metastatic breast cancer cells, its usual function is compromised causing organ dysfunction and death. Despite the significant research on breast cancer metastasis, it’s still the main culprit of breast cancer-related deaths. Exploring the complex molecular pathways associated with the initiation and progression of breast cancer metastasis could lead to the discovery of more effective ways of treating the devastating phenomenon. The present review article highlights the recent advances to understand the complexity associated with breast cancer metastases, organotropism and therapeutic advances.

PLoS Biology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (11) ◽  
pp. e3000872
Author(s):  
Yajing Lv ◽  
Xiaoshuang Wang ◽  
Xiaoyu Li ◽  
Guangwei Xu ◽  
Yuting Bai ◽  
...  

Metabolic reprogramming to fulfill the biosynthetic and bioenergetic demands of cancer cells has aroused great interest in recent years. However, metabolic reprogramming for cancer metastasis has not been well elucidated. Here, we screened a subpopulation of breast cancer cells with highly metastatic capacity to the lung in mice and investigated the metabolic alternations by analyzing the metabolome and the transcriptome, which were confirmed in breast cancer cells, mouse models, and patients’ tissues. The effects and the mechanisms of nucleotide de novo synthesis in cancer metastasis were further evaluated in vitro and in vivo. In our study, we report an increased nucleotide de novo synthesis as a key metabolic hallmark in metastatic breast cancer cells and revealed that enforced nucleotide de novo synthesis was enough to drive the metastasis of breast cancer cells. An increased key metabolite of de novo synthesis, guanosine-5'-triphosphate (GTP), is able to generate more cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) to activate cGMP-dependent protein kinases PKG and downstream MAPK pathway, resulting in the increased tumor cell stemness and metastasis. Blocking de novo synthesis by silencing phosphoribosylpyrophosphate synthetase 2 (PRPS2) can effectively decrease the stemness of breast cancer cells and reduce the lung metastasis. More interestingly, in breast cancer patients, the level of plasma uric acid (UA), a downstream metabolite of purine, is tightly correlated with patient’s survival. Our study uncovered that increased de novo synthesis is a metabolic hallmark of metastatic breast cancer cells and its metabolites can regulate the signaling pathway to promote the stemness and metastasis of breast cancer.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joji Nakayama ◽  
Takamasa Ishikawa ◽  
Tatsunori Nishimura ◽  
Sanae Yamanaka ◽  
Noriko Gotoh ◽  
...  

AbstractAbnormal biosyntheses of steroid hormones and dysregulation of steroid hormone receptors contribute to breast cancer metastasis but the mechanisms of that are poorly understand. Here we report a stress hormone producing enzyme, Hydroxysteroid (11-Beta) Dehydrogenase 1 (HSD11β1) promotes breast cancer metastasis. HSD11β1 was ectopically expressed in seventy-one percent of triple-negative breast tumors and correlated with shorter overall survival. HSD11β1 significantly promoted breast cancer metastasis through induction of epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT); conversely, pharmacologic and genetic inhibition of HSD11β1 suppressed metastatic progression of breast cancer cells. Moreover, 11-hydroxyprogesterone (11-OHP) whom HSD11β1 produced in breast cancer cells, conferred metastatic properties on non-metastatic breast cancer cells through induction of EMT. We identified Peroxisome Proliferator-activated Receptor Alpha (PPAR-α) as essential for both HSD11β1 and 11OHP-driven EMT. Knockdown of PPAR-α induced MET on HSD11β1-expressing breast cancer cells. Taken together, HSD11β1 promotes breast cancer metastasis and would be a novel target for suppressing breast cancer metastasis.


Heliyon ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. e06252
Author(s):  
Wei Chen ◽  
Shihyun Park ◽  
Chrishma Patel ◽  
Yuxin Bai ◽  
Karim Henary ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrianne Spencer ◽  
Andrew D. Sligar ◽  
Daniel Chavarria ◽  
Jason Lee ◽  
Darshil Choksi ◽  
...  

AbstractPhysical activity has been consistently linked to decreased incidence of breast cancer and a substantial increase in the length of survival of patients with breast cancer. However, the understanding of how applied physical forces directly regulate breast cancer remains limited. We investigated the role of mechanical forces in altering the chemoresistance, proliferation and metastasis of breast cancer cells. We found that applied mechanical tension can dramatically alter gene expression in breast cancer cells, leading to decreased proliferation, increased resistance to chemotherapeutic treatment and enhanced adhesion to inflamed endothelial cells and collagen I under fluidic shear stress. A mechanistic analysis of the pathways involved in these effects supported a complex signaling network that included Abl1, Lck, Jak2 and PI3K to regulate pro-survival signaling and enhancement of adhesion under flow. Studies using mouse xenograft models demonstrated reduced proliferation of breast cancer cells with orthotopic implantation and increased metastasis to the skull when the cancer cells were treated with mechanical load. Using high throughput mechanobiological screens we identified pathways that could be targeted to reduce the effects of load on metastasis and found that the effects of mechanical load on bone colonization could be reduced through treatment with a PI3Kγ inhibitor.


2020 ◽  
Vol 107 ◽  
pp. 65-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akshay A. Narkhede ◽  
James H. Crenshaw ◽  
David K. Crossman ◽  
Lalita A. Shevde ◽  
Shreyas S. Rao

2016 ◽  
Vol 76 (18) ◽  
pp. 5209-5218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shreyas S. Rao ◽  
Grace G. Bushnell ◽  
Samira M. Azarin ◽  
Graham Spicer ◽  
Brian A. Aguado ◽  
...  

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