Interaction of Adipose-Derived Stromal Cells with Breast Cancer Lines.

BACKGROUND:Assisted lipotransfer for breast reconstruction involves the isolation and supplementation of adipose-derived stromal cells (ADSCs) and this procedure raised concerns regarding safety in respect to promotion of tumor growth and relapses. Several in vitro and animal experimental studies indicated increased survival, growth and invasive characteristics of breast cancer cells upon interaction with ADSCs. These results seem to be in poor concordance with clinical observations of a low rate of cancer recurrences after assisted lipotransfer. METHODS:In the present study we investigated the effects of ADSCs, ADSCs differentiated to adipocytes and fibroblasts on 5 breast cancer cell lines (T47D, MCF-7, BT20, MDA-MB-231, ZR-75-1) and MCF-10A a nonmalignant counterpart. RESULTS:Results indicate that conditioned media (CM) of ADSCs stimulated the proliferation of breast cancer cell lines depending on the individual ADSC-breast cancer cell line combination. CMs of ADSCs differentiated to adipocytes gave a lower response and CMs of fibroblasts were also active. A putative cancer stem cell-like phenotype was not increased by ADSC-CMs, no physical interaction of cancer cells with ADSCs was detectable in scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and cell migration was not enhanced. Adipogenic differentiation of ADSCs indicate that hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), IGFBP-3 and -6, IL-6, CCL2/MCP-1 and M-CSF are not linked to the proliferative activity of CMs. CONCLUSION:The results indicate that the ADSCs used for assisted lipotransfer are not expected to increase the risk of tumor recurrence to a major degree in correspondence with the clinical observation of the affected breast cancer patients.