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Article
Hormonal Control of Alveolar Development and Its Implications for Breast Carcinogenesis
During puberty and pregnancy, the breast undergoes major restructuring in order to produce a structure that can secrete and eject copious amounts of milk. By analogy to other branched organs such as the lung o...
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Article
Prolactin signaling and Stat5: going their own separate ways?
Miyoshi et al. compared the role of the prolactin receptor (PrlR) and its downstream mediator, the signal transducer and activator of transcription 5 (Stat5), in mammary epithelial cells in vivo by studying PrlR-...
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Article
Using Gene Expression Arrays to Elucidate Transcriptional Profiles Underlying Prolactin Function
Prolactin is an ancient hormone, with different functions in many species. The binding of prolactin to its receptor, a member of the cytokine receptor superfamily, results in the activation of different intrac...
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Article
Identification of molecular apocrine breast tumours by microarray analysis
Previous microarray studies on breast cancer identified multiple tumour classes, of which the most prominent, named luminal and basal, differ in expression of the oestrogen receptor α gene (ER). We report here th...
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Article
Alveolar and Lactogenic Differentiation
The mouse mammary gland is a complex tissue that proliferates and differentiates under the control of systemic hormones during puberty, pregnancy and lactation. Once a highly branched milk duct system has been...
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Article
Stem Cells and the Stem Cell Niche in the Breast: An Integrated Hormonal and Developmental Perspective
The mammary gland is a unique organ in that it undergoes most of its development after birth under the control of systemic hormones. Whereas in most other organs stem cells divide in response to local stimuli,...
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Article
Open AccessAn oestrogen-dependent model of breast cancer created by transformation of normal human mammary epithelial cells
About 70% of breast cancers express oestrogen receptor α (ESR1/ERα) and are oestrogen-dependent for growth. In contrast with the highly proliferative nature of ERα-positive tumour cells, ERα-positive cells in ...
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Article
From normal cell types to malignant phenotypes
The phenotypic diversity of breast cancer has been proposed to result from different target cell types undergoing oncogenic transformation and giving rise to cancer stem cells. Global gene expression profiling...
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Article
Stem cells in chemical carcinogenesis
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Article
High hopes for RANKL: will the mouse model live up to its promise?
The steroid hormones, estrogens and progesterone are key drivers of postnatal breast development and are linked to breast carcinogenesis. Experiments in the mouse mammary gland have revealed that they rely on ...
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Article
ER and PR signaling nodes during mammary gland development
The ovarian hormones estrogen and progesterone orchestrate postnatal mammary gland development and are implicated in breast cancer. Most of our understanding of the molecular mechanisms of estrogen receptor (E...
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Article
Progesterone signalling in breast cancer: a neglected hormone coming into the limelight
Mutations are not always sufficient to drive breast carcinogenesis but additional factors determine whether genetically altered cells progress to the state dur...
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Article
Does Cancer Start in the Womb? Altered Mammary Gland Development and Predisposition to Breast Cancer due to in Utero Exposure to Endocrine Disruptors
We are now witnessing a resurgence of theories of development and carcinogenesis in which the environment is again being accepted as a major player in phenotype determination. Perturbations in the fetal enviro...
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Article
Reply to Is progesterone a neutral or protective factor for breast cancer?
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Article
Combined CSL and p53 downregulation promotes cancer-associated fibroblast activation
Stromal fibroblast senescence has been linked to ageing-associated cancer risk. However, density and proliferation of cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) are frequently increased. Loss or downmodulation of th...
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Article
Correction: Corrigendum: Combined CSL and p53 downregulation promotes cancer-associated fibroblast activation
Nat. Cell Biol. 17, 1193–1204 (2015); published online 24 August 2015; corrected after print 28 August 2015 An error in the print version of this Article meant that Witold W. Kilarski's name was incorrect. Thi...
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Article
Patient-derived xenograft (PDX) models in basic and translational breast cancer research
Patient-derived xenograft (PDX) models of a growing spectrum of cancers are rapidly supplanting long-established traditional cell lines as preferred models for conducting basic and translational preclinical re...
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Protocol
Analysis of Mammary Gland Phenotypes by Transplantation of the Genetically Marked Mammary Epithelium
The mammary gland is the only organ to undergo most of its development after birth and therefore particularly attractive for studying developmental processes. In the mouse, powerful tissue recombination techni...
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Chapter
Breast Cancer Microenvironment and the Metastatic Process
Metastases are the main cause of breast cancer-related death: hence, the clinical need to prevent and to stop metastasis is of outmost importance. Evidence has accumulated that the propensity of breast cancer ...
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Article
Open AccessOestrogen receptor α AF-1 and AF-2 domains have cell population-specific functions in the mammary epithelium
Oestrogen receptor α (ERα) is a transcription factor with ligand-independent and ligand-dependent activation functions (AF)-1 and -2. Oestrogens control postnatal mammary gland development acting on a subset o...
