Thesis (M.Sc.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Science - Department of Zoology

nflammatory breast cancer (IBC) represents a deadly aggressive subtype of BC with unique clinical and pathological characteristics. Although hundreds of studies identified different molecular and cellular factors involved in IBC progression, the role of adipocytes is still not elucidated yet. The adipose tissue (AT) expresses a variety of adipokines, which contribute in tumorigenesis. All types of cancer including BC contain a unique sub-population of cells with specific properties that are responsible for maintaining tumor growth and relapse termed cancer stem cells (CSCs). A total of 44 women (13 IBC and 31 non-IBC) diagnosed with BC were enrolled in this study. Herein, the main aim of the present study was to establish ex-vivo model of AT rather than 2D model. Besides, characterize the prominent AT secreted cytokines, chemokines and growth factors in obese IBC vis-à-vis obese non-IBC patients using human cytokine antibody array. Furthermore, our study validated whether the predominant cytokines level is also elevated at the transcript level after explant culture employing quantitative PCR (qPCR). Importantly, we studied the impact of AT secretome on the expression of epithelial-mesenchymal transition markers such as Vimentin and E-cadherin as well as cancer stem cell markers including, CD24 and CD44 in MDA-MB-231 non-IBC and SUM-149 IBC cell lines using qPCR. Data were statistically analyzed using unpaired Student{u2019}s t-test. Our cytokine array results revealed that an overall significantly higher level of a panel of 28 cytokines secreted by AT of obese IBC when compared to that of obese non-IBC patients IBC patients

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