Distinct Effect of Invasive and Non‐invasive Breast Cancer Cells on Vasculogenic Capacity of Endothelial Progenitors

Abstract

Blood vessel formation plays an essential role in tumor growth and metastasis. Cancer cells secrete various pro‐angiogenic factors that activate preexisting vascular endothelial cells as well as induce recruitment of bone‐marrow‐derived endothelial progenitors; endothelial colony forming cells (ECFC). The interactions between cancer cells and endothelial cells have been largely investigated, but it has been rarely studied whether the vasculogenic capacity of ECFC are differently affected by invasive and non‐invasive phenotype of the cancer cells. Thus, we investigated to determine the vasculogenic potentials of invasive and non‐invasive breast cancer cells. MDA‐MB‐231 and MCF7 were applied as invasive and non‐invasive breast cancer cells. Bone marrow‐derived ECFC were isolated from human peripheral blood. Tubular structure number and length as well as spheroid sprout number and length formed by ECFC was increased when treated with MDA‐MB‐231‐derived conditioned medium (CM) compared with MCF7‐derived CM. Migration of ECFC was also increased by treatment of MDA‐MB‐231‐derived CM compared to MCF7. To mimic tumor microenvironment, ECFC were directly co‐cultured with cancer cells. Tube formation of ECFC was enhanced under the co‐culture condition with MDA‐MB‐231 compared to ECFC alone control. Interestingly, ECFC co‐cultured with MCF7 significantly decreased tube formation. Our results suggest that MDA‐MB‐231 and MCF7 promote ECFC vasculogenesis in different manners, which may be the important determinants to characterize invasive and non‐invasive phenotype of the cancer cells.Support or Funding InformationThis research was supported by Priority Research Centers Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (2016r1a6a1a03007648), and supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT (2017R1A2B4005463).This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.