Methods in Mammary Gland Development and Cancer: the second ENDBC meeting - intravital imaging, genomics, modeling and metastasis

John Stingl,Marina A Glukhova,Mohamed Bentires-Alj,Matthew J Smalley

doi:10.1186/bcr2630

Abstract

The second meeting of the European Network for Breast Development and Cancer (ENBDC) on 'Methods in Mammary Gland Development and Cancer' was held in April 2010 in Weggis, Switzerland. The focus was on genomics and bioinformatics, extracellular matrix and stroma-epithelial cell interactions, intravital imaging, the search for metastasis founder cells and mouse models of breast cancer.

Highlights

The European Network for Breast Development and Cancer (ENBDC) organized its second meeting to foster interactions and the sharing of protocols between groups working on breast development and cancer
Ectopic expression of EPSTI1 in one human breast epithelial cell line increased tumorspheres-forming ability and induced epithelialmesenchymal transition, whereas knockdown of EPSTI1 in another cell line had the opposite effect. These findings suggest an important role for EPSTI1 in the regulation of tumor cell properties [1]
The parallel evolution model indicates that patients should be stratified for therapy by analysis of disseminated tumor cells (DTCs) and metastases. The results of these studies suggest that we should re-evaluate some of the cancer research models, for example, cell lines of metastatic origin and preclinical models

Summary

Introduction

The European Network for Breast Development and Cancer (ENBDC) organized its second meeting to foster interactions and the sharing of protocols between groups working on breast development and cancer. The meeting included discussions on genomics, bioinformatics, intravital microscopy, disseminated tumor cells, ex vivo culture and in vivo models for studying breast cancer. The second, class prediction, is a supervised analysis where, after identifying the transcriptional differences between predefined groups, a genomic classifier (signature) is defined to classify new samples.

Results

Conclusion