Gene expression profiling of MCF7 breast cancer xenografts overexpressing podoplanin (human array)

Expression of the membrane glycoprotein podoplanin is upregulated in several human cancers and might be associated with their malignant progression. The exact biological function and molecular targets of cancer cell-expressed podoplanin have remained unclear, however. Here, we ectopically overexpressed podoplanin in a human breast carcinoma xenograft model to study its role in cancer progression. To identify molecular mediators of podoplanin-induced effects we compared transcriptional profiles of podoplanin-overexpressing and control tumors. Keywords: comparative transcriptional profiling MCF7 human breast carcinoma cells were stably transfected with the pTet-Off-regulator plasmid and the pTRE2hyg response plasmid, comprising or not full-length cDNA of human podoplanin (transcript variant 1, GenBank Accession number NM_006474). Three podoplanin-overexpressing and three control clones were isolated and each of them was injected bilaterally into the mammary fat pads of five female nude mice. Tumors were harvested after 24 days of growth and RNA was extracted from each of them. RNA of the 10 tumors derived from the same cell clone was pooled to give a total of six samples for microarray analysis (3x podoplanin-overexpressing, 3x control).