Group Leaders: Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Carsten Gründker, Prof. Dr. med. Günter Emons
.
Breast cancer represents a major health problem, with more than 1,000,000
new cases and 370,000 deaths yearly worldwide. The major problem in primary breast cancer is
the aggressive metastatic behavior. Bone, as well as lung and liver, is one of the most preferential
metastatic target sites for breast cancers. Although the precise molecular mechanisms underlying
this preference need to be elucidated, it appears that bone microenvironments possess unique
biological features that enable circulating cancer cells to home, survive and proliferate,
and destroy bone. The crosstalk between metastatic breast cancer cells and bone is critical
to the development and progression of bone metastases. Disruption of this interaction will
allow us to design mechanism-based effective and specific therapeutic interventions for bone
metastases.
We have established a coculture system of different breast cancer cell lines stable transfected
with red fluorescence and human primary osteoblasts (hOB) or MG63 human osteosarcoma cells
to analyze tumor cell invasion to bone. We could show that breast cancer cell invasion was
increased when cocultured with hOB or MG63.
Using this model we will examine the influence of various pharmaceuticals on migration and
invasion of the tumor cells on cellular as well as molecular level.
.
Funding:
Deutsche Krebshilfe - Dr. Mildred Scheel Stiftung, approved on 05/15/2006 for 3 years: Influence of GnRH analogs on bone-directed metastasis of breast cancer cells in vitro and in vivo.
Deutsche Krebshilfe - Dr. Mildred Scheel Stiftung, approved on 04/17/2009 for 3 years: Effects of gene products of the metastasis-suppressor-gene KISS1 on proliferation, metastasis and gene expression of breast cancers in vitro and in vivo.
Selected Publications: