Abstract
Fetal cells enter maternal circulation during pregnancy and persist in the woman’s body for decades, achieving a form of physiological microchimerism. These cells were also evidenced in tumors. We investigated the frequency and concentration of fetal microchimerism in the local breast cancer environment. From 19 patients with confirmed breast neoplasia, after breast surgical resection, we collected three fresh specimens from the tumor core, breast tissue at tumor periphery, and adjacent normal breast tissue. The presence of male DNA was analyzed with a quantitative PCR assay for the sex determining region gene (SRY) gene. In the group of women who had given birth to at least one son, we detected fetal microchimerism in 100% of samples from tumors and their periphery and in 64% (9 of 14) of those from normal breast tissue. The tissues from the tumor and its periphery carry a significantly increased number of SRY copies compared to its neighboring common breast tissue (p = 0.005). The median of the normalized SRY-signal was about 77 (range, 3.2–21467) and 14-fold (range, 1.3–2690) greater in the tumor and respectively in the periphery than in the normal breast tissue. In addition, the relative expression of the SRY gene had a median 5.5 times larger in the tumor than in its periphery (range, 1.1–389.4). We found a heterogeneous distribution of fetal microchimerism in breast cancer environment. In women with sons, breast neoplasia harbors male cells at significantly higher levels than in peripheral and normal breast tissue.
Highlights
Studies uniformly have shown that fetal cells are transferred into the maternal circulation during pregnancy, in humans and other mammalian species [1]
Breast cancer tissues and adjacent tissues were obtained from 19 patients who underwent breast surgical resection between January 2013 and June 2014
Without any male child, but with abortions in their history, we found the presence of microchimerism in two samples from the tumor, one sample from periphery and none in adjacent normal, not involved breast tissue
Summary
Studies uniformly have shown that fetal cells are transferred into the maternal circulation during pregnancy, in humans and other mammalian species [1]. Most of them disappear after birth, some populations persist in the maternal tissues and circulation, without any apparent graft-versus-host reaction or graft rejection. Heterogeneous Distribution of Microchimerism in Breast Cancer microchimerism, is present in women for decades after pregnancy [2]. It involves various cell types including multi-lineage stem cells [1]. In the inflammatory lesions which occur during pregnancy, these fetal cells, as endothelial precursors, are able to form blood vessels that express CD31 and/or VEGFR2 [3]
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