正常乳腺和乳腺癌中的细胞衰老。对癌症治疗的意义

Cellular senescence (CS) is a major homeostatic biological process, which plays a key role in normal tissue development and provides protection from stressful cell insults. The role of CS in mammary-gland development and breast cancer is not well understood.

While there is a lack of experimental data on the role of CS in the development of the pre-pubertal mammary gland, there is evidence for a biphasic senescence response in adult normal-mammary-epithelial cells, where the bypass of the first senescence barrier (M0) seems to be a key step in the development of premalignant lesions, with genetic abnormalities that resemble in situ breast carcinoma.

Further, there is accumulating evidence for the role of cellular senescence in breast-cancer response, regarding treatment and patient outcome.

Here, we review the current literature on cellular senescence, in epithelial-mammary cells, breast-cancer cells, and breast-tumor-microenvironment-resident cells.

Furthermore, we discuss its putative role in breast-cancer response, regarding treatment and disease progression.

In addition, we provide preliminary evidence of CS in breast-cancer-microenvironment cells, such as tumor-associated fibroblasts and tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes, by employing the novel GL13 lipofuscin stain, as a marker of cellular senescence.