Published in:
Open Access
01-04-2014 | Letter
Early but not late pregnancy induces lifelong reductions in the proportion of mammary progesterone sensing cells and epithelial Wnt signaling
Authors:
Fabienne Meier-Abt, Heike Brinkhaus, Mohamed Bentires-Alj
Published in:
Breast Cancer Research
|
Issue 2/2014
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Excerpt
Early pregnancy has a strong and lifelong protective effect against breast cancer in humans and rodents [
1‐
3]. This breast cancer protective effect is diminished or even reversed after late pregnancy [
4]. As a potential mechanism for the early parity-induced protective effect, we and others have demonstrated that early parity induces differentiation of mammary epithelial cells [
5‐
7]. Furthermore, early parity downregulates the Wnt/Notch signaling ratio and the
in vitro and
in vivo proliferation potential of basal stem/progenitor cells in mice [
6,
7]. These early parity-induced changes of gene expression and dynamics of mammary stem/progenitor cells were caused primarily by a decrease in the proportion of hormone-sensitive and Wnt4-secreting luminal epithelial cells [
6,
7]. …
