Functional Assays of Breast Cancer Cell Lines
By: Jocelyne Milke
Department: Biology
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Nicole Salazar Velmeshev
Black and Hispanic women are more likely to die from breast cancer than White women. Breast cancer is divided into the molecular subtypes TNBC, HER2 positive, and luminal. We hypothesize that breast cancer cell lines from minority women exhibit worse phenotype including enhanced migration and invasion, and inflamed macrophages and endothelial cells. We conducted migration and invasion assays on nine breast cancer cell lines, from representative racial categories, using Boyden chambers. Matrigel was used to represent the extracellular matrix and VEGF was used as a chemoattractant. Microscopy imaging was used for quantification. Macrophages and endothelial cells will be co-cultured with nine breast cancer cell lines and results will be analyzed using flow cytometry. For the trans-endothelial migration assays, CXCL12 will be used as a chemoattractant at varying concentrations, 10 nM and 25 nM, and control wells will have no CXCL12 present. Cell lines from Black women with TNBC status were 21% more migratory but 2% less invasive than the cell line with TNBC status from White women. TNBC cell lines were 59% more migratory than HER2 and 69% more migratory than luminal cell lines. We expect higher levels of inflammatory cytokines and more trans-endothelial migration of breast cancer cells in minority cell lines. Our studies use biologically representative cell lines from minority groups which have been understudied and will identify differences dependent on racial categories.