Högskolan i Skövde

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in female population worldwide. In addition to mutations, the breast tumor microenvironment especially the tumor cell - stroma interactions through extracellular matrix components and multiple growth factors have been shown to promote tumor progression. Among those, increases in both TGF-β (transforming growth factor beta) activities and periostin expression were associated with tumor cell survival, proliferation and metastasis. TGF-β role in breast cancer progression including its ability to promote periostin expression has been extensively studied. In contrast, the role of periostin in cancer progression remains to be fully understood. Thus, the present study aimed to determine whether TGF-β and periostin have effect on each other’s expressions in breast tumor and stroma cells using in vitro cell models. Through Western blot analyses and ELISAs, the periostin and TGF-β expressions of both stroma and tumor cells were analyzed following TGF-β and periostin treatments, respectively. The results indicate that TGF-β treatments led to significant increase in periostin expression in fibroblasts (p<0.05). In addition, periostin was differentially expressed by human breast cancer cells following TGF-β1 treatment. The TGF-β activities involved activation of pSMAD2 in both L929 fibroblasts and MCF10A mammary cells. Taken together, all experimental data indicate that within the breast tumor TGF-β and periostin likely participate in a regulation loop. Whether this putative regulation loop is critical to metastasis remains to be determined. Should periostin play a critical role in breast cancer progression, it could become a specific target in the preventive and/or therapeutic development of breast cancer patients.