Malignant breast cancer cells revert to normal with manipulation.

2004 MAY 6 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Manipulation of the extracellular matrix of non-malignant breast cells can lead to genomic instability via oxidative damage, study findings show.

The extracellular matrix (ECM) is a network of fibrous and globular proteins that surrounds cells.

Speaking at the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology conference, Experimental Biology 2004, Mina Bissell described how manipulation of the microenvironment can allow malignant breast cancer cells to revert to normal cells again. She also described how the tissue culture of the extracellular matrix affects the cancerous cells' resistance to chemotherapy, independently of the characteristics of the malignancy itself.

Bissell, a Distinguished Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, is best known as the researcher who uncovered the critical role of the ECM in normal breast function and how its aberration may contribute to breast cancer development. While the role of the ECM during embryonic development had been recognized for decades, its important role in tissue-specific function was not appreciated before the work conducted in a handful of laboratories, including Bissell's. In fact, the ECM was regarded as scaffolding for tissues and not much more.

Bissell postulated in 1981, and later showed experimentally, that the ECM was part of a "dynamic reciprocity" in the social interaction between cells and the nucleus, much like hormones and growth factors, with the ECM at times telling the nucleus of the cells what to do and thus directing ...