上皮间质转化与乳腺癌

Epithelial Mesenchymal Transition and Breast Cancer

乳腺癌是女性最常见的恶性肿瘤之一,而肿瘤的侵袭与转移是导致乳腺癌患者治疗后复发与死亡的主要原因。上皮-间质细胞转化(EMT)是上皮细胞转变为间充质细胞的过程,参与了肿瘤干细胞的形成以及肿瘤细胞的浸润、迁移和转移,不仅增强了乳腺癌细胞侵袭和转移的能力,还可使癌细胞获得自我更新等干细胞特性,促进乳腺癌干细胞的产生。因此,研究EMT对寻找控制乳腺癌侵袭和转移的有效途径以及降低乳腺癌患者的死亡率有非常重要的意义,亦可为乳腺癌的治疗提供新的靶点。

Breast cancer is one of the most common tumors in women. The main causes of reappear and even death of breast cancer patients were the tumor invasion and metastasis. Epithelial Mesenchymal Transition （EMT） is a proc-ess of tumor cell phenotypic changes. The unusual combination of EMT with stem cells competence might result in the production of tumor stem cells and enhance the capacity of tumour cell invasion, migration and metastasis. As a result, EMT can be served as a new approach for the study of breast cancer. It also could provide new targets for the treatment of breast cancer. In this paper, we mainly reviewed the research progress of EMT and breast cancer.