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Review
Caveolin in Breast Cancer
Toula Bouras, Michael P. Lisanti, Richard G. Pestell
volume 3 | issue 10
october 2004Pages: 931-941
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Caveolin-1 is the principle structural protein of caveolae, sphingolipid and cholesterolrich invaginations of the plasma membrane involved in vesicular trafficking and signal transduction. During caveolae-dependent signaling, caveolin-1 acts as a scaffold protein to sequester and organize multi-molecular signaling complexes involved in diverse cellular activities and as such serves as a paradigm by which numerous disease processes may be affected by ablation or mutation of caveolin-1. The hypothesis that caveolin-1 conveys a tumor/transformation suppressor function in the mammary gland is derived from several independent lines of evidence accumulated by genetic, molecular and clinical approaches. The human caveolin-1 gene maps to a suspected tumor suppressor locus (D7S522/ 7q31.1) frequently deleted in human breast carcinomas. In addition, up to 16% of human breast carcinomas harbor a dominant-negative mutation, P132L in the caveolin-1 gene. Caveolin-1 RNA and protein levels are also downregulated in human primary breast carcinomas and cell lines, with reintroduction of caveolin-1 in vitro sufficient to inhibit numerous tumorigenic properties, including anchorage independent growth and invasiveness. Most recently caveolin-1 knockout mice have provided breakthroughs in understanding the dynamic role of caveolin-1 in the pathogenesis of mammary epithelial cell hyperplasia, tumorigenesis and metastasis in a vivo setting. This review concentrates on recent advances implicating caveolin-1 in breast cancer pathogenesis, with emphasis on the signaling pathways regulated during these processes.
We now provide open access to journal articles published online for one year or more. This article may be downloaded at the following link:
Download PDFIf the document does not open, please right-click on the link (control-click on a Macintosh) and select the option to save the file to disk.