Breast cancer-associated fibroblasts: their roles in tumor initiation, progression and clinical applications

Abstract

Breast cancer is the most common malignant tumor in women, and the incidence of this disease has increased in recent years because of changes in diet, living environment, gestational age, and other unknown factors. Previous studies focused on cancer cells, but an increasing number of recent studies have analyzed the contribution of cancer microenvironment to the initiation and progression of breast cancer. Cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs), the most abundant cells in tumor stroma, secrete various active biomolecules, including extracellular matrix components, growth factors, cytokines, proteases, and hormones. CAFs not only facilitate the initiation, growth, angiogenesis, invasion, and metastasis of cancer but also serve as biomarkers in the clinical diagnosis, therapy, and prognosis of breast cancer. In this article, we reviewed the literature and summarized the research findings on CAFs in breast cancer.

Keywords

cancer-associated fibroblast / breast cancer / progression / prognosis

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Acknowledgements

We apologize to those authors whose work was not cited because of space restrictions. This work was supported by a grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 30930038).

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Aixiu Qiao, Feng Gu, Xiaojing Guo, Xinmin Zhang, and Li Fu declare no conflict of interest. This manuscript is a review article and does not involve a research protocol requiring approval by the relevant institutional review board or ethics committee.

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2016 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg