Adipose Tissue Increase Dramatically the Tumour Growth When Co-Injected with Breast Cancer Cell Lines: A Prudence Recommendation for Autologous Fat Transfer in Breast.
Authors: Garrido I. , Lacroix-Triki M. , Mojallal A. , Dirat B. , Dirat B. , Muller C. , Valet P. , Delord J. , Allal B. 
Published: December 2010

Background: Autologous fat transfer takes an increasingly importance in plastic surgery. Indeed during the last decade, fat transfer was first of all used for breast reconstruction and now in breast augmentation, breast asymmetry, breast defects after lumpectomy and in some other breast deformation. Nevertheless this extension of the technique in the mammary parenchyma raises several questions. One of the most crucial interrogation is related to the type of interaction induced by the adipose tissue grafted with the breast cancer cells, interaction which remains poorly understood. Data from the literature evoked that these interactions lead to induce the increase of tumour growth properties. To decipher this interrogation, we designed experiments whose aims are to better understand and evaluate the actions and interactions induced by the xenograft of adipose tissue plus breast cancer cells in terms of tumour growth properties.Method: To study the impact of fat in tumours growth properties, we performed experiments of co-implantation of a panel of breast cancer cell lines (two humans: MDAMB-231 and SUM-159 PT ; and one mice: 67NR) with human adipose tissue from abdominal liposuction in nude mice. It was reported that tumour progression is the product of an evolving cross talk between tumour cells and its surrounding supportive tissue, the tumour stroma. Since mature adipocytes are radioresistant compared to other components of the tumour stroma, we investigated the effect of irradiated (15 Gray) or not adipose tissue on tumour growth properties. In each experiment we used 3 groups. The first one xenografted with cell lines only, the second one xenografted with cell plus fat and in the last constituted of cell plus irradiated fat. At the end of experiments mice were sacrificed and tumours were removed, dissected and one part was fixed and the other one (piece 2mm3) was re-implanted in a new mice. In these new groups we also studied the tumours growth and tumours tissue as previously described to evaluate the “possible” long time effect.Results-discussion: We have showed, whatever the cell line, that co-implantation of human fat (irradiated or not) with breast cancer cell lines induces a dramatic increase in tumour growth properties compared to cell line alone. Furthermore, the preliminary in vitro results associated to the ongoing immunohistochemistry analysis performed in the tumours from in vivo experiments of co-injection of fat plus breast cancer cell lines, gives related-results in term of tumour growth properties such as those observed in the in vivo experiment. Even-if larger in vitro studies are needed and are ongoing to consolidate our in vivo results, the whole of these results lead us to emit a recommendation of prudence with respect to this technique in mammary parenchyma.

Citation Information: Cancer Res 2009;69(24 Suppl):Abstract nr 3102.