Characteristic Features of Function of Morphofunctional Zones in Normal Epithelium, Breast Fibroadenoma, and Breast Cancer

Abstract

There are data that normal epithelium and benign and malignant tumors are arranged by the type of epidermal proliferative units [1‐3, 12]. Therefore, the same principles of regulation of cell proliferation and differentiation are true in all these tissues. Many authors believe that the appearance of neoplasm is associated with changers in a single morphofunctional unit. In addition, differentiation of stem cells located in the center of such a structural unit was predominantly considered in terms of the effect of the environment (“niche”), hormones, or growth factors on these cells [9‐11]. The goal of our study was to investigate the cooperative interaction of tissue units and possible differentiation of cambial cells in the system of these units in normal and neoplastic tissue. Materials and methods. This study was performed with the tumor tissue of two groups of patients with breast cancer or fibroadenoma; each group consisted of 15 patients 40 to 60 years old. Cancer and fibroadenoma tissue prints were treated with silver nitrate according to Ranvier. Morphometry was performed using a Video-Test 3.2 image analyzer (Russia). The study parameters were the cell area ( S) and the ellipticity degree ( ED ). These parameters were used to determine the size of different subpopulations of cells: filial ( S = 52.4 µ m 2 , SE = 0.61), early filial ( S = 61 µ m 2 , SE = 0.93), reserve ( S = 43.7 µ m 2 , SE = 0.58), elongated ( S = 43.0‐47.4 µ m 2 , SE = 0.26‐0.42), and oval ( S = 51.7‐ 89 µ m 2 , SE = 0.62‐0.78). In each case, we analyzed two thousand cells. The proportion of each type of cells in the population was determined for 250 cells, which corresponds to the content of cells in one functional zone. Results. Earlier, we found that epithelial cells are groups into rosettes containing six or seven cells in the periphery and three or four cells in the center [5, 7, 8]. Rosettes, in turn, are joined into morphofunctinal zones. Each zone consists of approximately 24 rosettes