A new co-culture model of breast cancer-cell lines labeled by green fluorescent proteins

One in eight American women has a lifetime risk of developing breast cancer, and 1 in 29 has a lifetime risk of dying from breast cancer (7). Breast cancer had become an extensively investigated field in recent years because its incidence and detection dramatically increased during the 1980s (about 4% per year). Now, breast cancer is the second most common cancer among women, causing more than 40,000 deaths every year in United States alone (8).

Nearly 80% of breast cancers start in the mammary gland duct, giving rise to infiltrating (or invasive) ductal carcinoma (IDC). Breast cancer patients usually die of metastatic disease and the survival rate drops to 20% when metastatic cancer is diagnosed at a distant position (8). Thus, understanding the progression of breast cancer to a metastatic state and the behavior of metastatic cells are important goals of research. Both the early detection of primary tumors and control of metastasis are considered key and effective strategies to increase the survival rate of breast cancer. The primary focus of this research is to develop an in vitro cell model system in order to study aspects of breast cancer metastasis.