The mammary gland undergoes extensive remodeling between the beginning of pregnancy and lactation; this involves cellular processes including cell proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis, all of which are under the control of numerous regulators. To unravel the role played by miRNA, we describe here 47 new ovine miRNA cloned from mammary gland in early pregnancy displaying strong similari...

Concerned about the risks of mammography screening in the adult population, we analyzed the ability of human mammary epithelial cells to cope with mammogram-induced DNA damage. Our study shows that an X-ray dose of 20 mGy, which is the standard dose received by the breast surface per two-view mammogram X-ray exploration, induces increased frequencies of DNA double-strand breaks to in vitro aged...

objective: helicobacter pylori has a well-established role in the development of gastric cancer. in vitro studies reveal increased proliferation of the gastric mucosa in the presence of h. pylori infection. it has been also shown that production of some cytokines, such as interleukin-1 beta (il-1b) is increased in h. pylori infection. in addition, il-1b increases proliferation of gastric epithe...

BACKGROUND The objective of this study was to establish the buffalo mammary epithelial cell line (BuMEC) and characterize its mammary specific functions. METHODOLOGY Buffalo mammary tissue collected from the slaughter house was processed enzymatically to obtain a heterogenous population of cells containing both epithelial and fibroblasts cells. Epithelial cells were purified by selective tryp...

Elafin is an elastase inhibitor with a unique structure, not related to the serpin family, which includes the neutrophil elastase inhibitor. The gene was identified in this laboratory by subtractive hybridization between RNAs from human mammary tumor-derived cells and cDNAs from nor mal human mammary epithelial cells. Elafin is consistently expressed in normal mammary epithelial cells, but is d...

We have used transgenic mice overexpressing the human tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinases (TIMP)-1 gene under the control of the ubiquitous beta-actin promoter/enhancer to evaluate matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) function in vivo in mammary gland growth and development. By crossing the TIMP-1 transgenic animals with mice expressing an autoactivating stromelysin-1 transgene targeted to mammary...

Distinct subsets of cells, including cells with stem cell-like properties, have been proposed to exist in normal human breast epithelium and breast carcinomas. The cellular origins of epithelial cells contributing to gland development, tissue homeostasis and cancer are, however, still poorly understood. The mouse is a widely used model of mammary gland development, both directly by studying the...

We have previously reported the isolation and culture of a human breast epithelial cell type with stem cell characteristics (Type I HBEC) from reduction mammoplasty using the MSU-1 medium. Subsequently, we have developed several different normal human adult stem cell types from different tissues using the K-NAC medium. In this study, we determined whether this low calcium K-NAC medium with anti...

Voltage-gated K(+) (Kv) channels are widely expressed in the plasma membranes of numerous cells such as epithelial cells. Recently, it has been demonstrated that Kv channels are associated with the proliferation of several types of cancer cells. Specifically, Kv1.3 seems to be involved in cancer cell proliferation and apoptosis. In the present study, we examined the expression of Kv1.3 in immor...

Normal human mammary epithelial cells express hcx43 and hCx26 proteins, which form functional gap junction channels. Both Cx genes are transcriptionally down-regulated in mammary carcinoma cell lines; consequently, no protein is made and gap junctions are absent. This result suggests that the loss of gap junctional communication may play an important role in carcinogenesis. To address this ques...