Breast Cancer-Induced Changes in Adipose Tissue Morphology

Abstract

Adipocytes in breast cancer (BC) produce growth factors that contribute to cell proliferation, tumorigenesis, and metastasis. Adipose cells adjacent to BC cells are called cancer-associated adipocytes (CAA) and help BC survivorship. Tumors next to normal mammary fat cells change the surrounding tissue, prompting CAAs to appear smaller and irregularly shaped. We hypothesized that adipocytes in tumor tissue (control) will appear smaller than in untreated healthy tissue (vehicle). Specifically, the control group might have similar morphology to CAA compared to vehicle. To investigate, hematoxylin and eosin-stained (H&E) tissue were imaged at 20x magnification and analyzed using GIMP software. Over 30,000 cells were examined, and 54 images were captured from nine mice across three different treatment groups. Our results showed that extra-small cells are abundant across all treatment conditions. Additionally, adipose tumor samples exhibited a greater number of cells similar in size to CAAs compared to normal tissue. Lastly, we observed that the mammary fat pad tissue far from the tumor had similar morphology to CAAs. These results can potentially have clinical implications such as developing a diagnostic tool to screen for breast cancer by examining the adipose tissue morphological differences in patients