Murine Mammary fat pad on high fat diet

Younger age and obesity increase the incidence and rates of metastasis of triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), an aggressive subtype of breast cancer. The tissue microenvironment, specifically the extracellular matrix (ECM), is known to promote tumor invasion and metastasis. We sought to characterize the effect of both age and obesity on the ECM of mammary fat pads. We used a diet-induced obesity (DIO) model where 10-week-old female mice were fed a high-fat diet (HFD) for 16 weeks or a control chow diet (CD) where time points were every 4 weeks to monitor age and obesity HFD progression. We isolated the mammary fat pads to characterize the ECM at each time point. Utilizing proteomics, we found that the early stages of obesity were sufficient to induce distinct differences in the ECM composition of mammary fat pads that promote TNBC cell invasion. ECM proteins previously implicated in driving TNBC invasion Collagen IV and Collagen VI, were enriched with weight gain. Together these data implicate ECM changes in the primary tumor microenvironment as mechanisms by which age and obesity contribute to breast cancer progression.