PMID: 11911253Mar 26, 2002Paper

Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) in breast cancer cell lines of different tumorigenicity

Anticancer Research
Beatrice E BachmeierC P Sommerhoff

Abstract

In the present study we investigated the presence, amount and activity of matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs)-1, -2, -3, -7, -8, -9, -10, -11 and -13 and TIMP-1 in three well-defined breast cancer cell lines with different biological behaviour; i.e. poorly-invasive MCF-7 cells, invasively growing MDA-MB-231 cells and invasive and highly-metastatic MDA-MB-435 cells. The parallel immunocytochemical determination of the degree of cellular differentiation, as monitored by the immunocytochemical expression of cytokeratins (CK), confirmed differences in the tumor cell differentiation. Thereby, MCF-7 cells expressed more glandular CKs than MDA-MB-231 cells, while MDA-MB-435 cells were only labelled by pancytokeratin markers, but neither by glandular nor by squamous epithelial CKs. Conditioned media were analyzed for the presence of MMPs and TIMP-1 using Western blot with specific polyclonal antibodies and for gelatinolytic and caseinolytic activity by zymography. In addition, the cellular pool of several MMPs was investigated by immunocytochemistry. An enhanced cytoplasmatic staining for MMP-3 and -9, MMP-1, -10 and -11 was seen in the highly metastatic cells at almost equal levels, while MMP-2 revealed only a minor intracellular stainin...Continue Reading

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