Using a mouse model developed to study the basal-like subtype of breast cancer, a team led by Liza Makowski, assistant professor in the Department of Nutrition with the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and member of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, and Sneha Sundaram, PhD, a post-doctoral fellow in the Makowski Lab, discovered that obesity radically alters the cellular microenvironment of mammary glands in ways favorable to the growth of basal-like tumors. One major change is that obesity promotes a growth factor signaling pathway between the hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) protein and an oncogene known as c-Met that is linked with basal-like cancer formation. In animals with elevated levels of HGF, the development of basal-like tumors increased. Read more here.
Study mentioned: Sundaram S, et al. Role of HGF in obesity-associated tumorigenesis: C3(1)-TAg mice as a model for human basal-like breast cancer. Breast Cancer Res Treat. 2013 Nov 12. [Epub ahead of print] PMID: 24218051
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