The Role of Alternatively spliced Fibroblast Growth Factor Receptor 2 Isoforms in Breast Cancer

• Main Author: Wei, Wangzhi
• Other Authors: Ezzat, Shereen
• Language: en_ca
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: Fibroblast Growth Factor Receptor 2; Breast Cancer; NF-κB; 0992
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/31636

Recent genome-wide association studies identified FGFR2 as one of breast cancer susceptibility genes. FGFR2 expression was down-regulated in breast carcinomas when compared with paired normal epithelium. Stable retroviral transduction of FGFR2-IIIb and its alternatively spliced FGFR2-IIIc variants was achieved in breast cancer MDA-MB-231, T47D and near normal MCF-10A cells. Our findings revealed a direct reduction of breast cancer cell growth and motility, a significant arrest of transformed morphogenetic changes including the Epithelial to Mesenchymal transition (EMT), anchorage independent growth, and the formation of growth-arrested 3D acinar architectures, and suppressive actions on orthotopically xenografted epithelial neoplasms and surrounding tumor stroma. These tumor protective effects were concordant with physical interactions between the two FGFR2 isoforms and IKKβ. Consistent with these interactions we noted FGFR2 to inhibit NF-κB signaling, including decreased nuclear RelA/p65 NF-κB localization, down-regulation of a transfected NF-κB luciferase reporter, reduced production of NF-κB-dependent transcripts, Interleukin-6 and p-STAT3.