Breast Cancer Research

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Review

Inflammation and breast cancer. Inflammatory component of mammary carcinogenesis in ErbB2 transgenic mice

Raffaele A Calogero, Francesca Cordero, Guido Forni* and Federica Cavallo

Author Affiliations

Molecular Biotechnology Center, Department of Clinical and Biological Sciences, Via Nizza 52, 10126 Turin, Italy

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Breast Cancer Research 2007, 9:211 doi:10.1186/bcr1745

Published: 10 August 2007

Abstract

This review addresses genes differentially expressed in the mammary gland transcriptome during the progression of mammary carcinogenesis in BALB/c mice that are transgenic for the rat neu (ERBB2, or HER-2/neu) oncogene (BALB-neuT664V-E mice). The Ingenuity knowledge database was used to characterize four functional association networks whose hub genes are directly linked to inflammation (specifically, the genes encoding IL-1β, tumour necrosis factor, interferon-γ, and monocyte chemoattractant protein-1/CC chemokine ligand-2) and are increasingly expressed during such progression. In silico meta-analysis in a human breast cancer dataset suggests that proinflammatory activation in the mammary glands of these mice reflects a general pattern of human breast cancer.