Editorial

Breaking down barriers: the importance of the stromal microenvironment in acquiring invasiveness in young women's breast cancer

Pepper Schedin^1,2,3,4 and Virginia Borges^1,2,3

¹  Department of Medicine, Division of Medical Oncology, University of Colorado Denver, 12801 East 17th Avenue, Aurora, CO 80045, USA

²  University of Colorado Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Colorado Denver, 12801 East 17th Avenue, Aurora, CO 80045, USA

³  Young Women's Breast Cancer Translational Research Program at the University of Colorado Hospital, 12605 E. 16 Avenue, Aurora, CO 80025, USA

⁴  AMC Cancer Research Center, University of Colorado Denver, 12801 East 17th Avenue, Aurora, CO 80045, USA

author email corresponding author email

Breast Cancer Research 2009, 11:102doi:10.1186/bcr2235

Published:	26 March 2009

See related research article by Ma et al., http://breast-cancer-research.com/content/11/1/R7

Abstract

Gene expression profiling was performed on laser captured breast stroma and epithelium obtained from 14 breast cancer patients. As with breast epithelium, of the stromal gene expression changes observed between normal tissue and invasive ductal carcinoma, greater than 90% occurred early, at the normal to ductal carcinoma in situ transition. Only 10% of stromal and 0% of epithelial genes were differentially regulated between non-invasive ductal carcinoma in situ and invasive disease. These data suggest that the majority of gene expression changes required for transformation occur early, prior to histological evidence of an invasive phenotype, the stroma cooperates closely with epithelium in this transformation, and for acquisition of the invasive phenotype, the stroma is dominant over the epithelium.