Sensory nerves enhance triple negative breast cancer migration and metastasis through PlexinB3 signaling. Sensory nerves enhance triple negative breast cancer migration and metastasis through PlexinB3 signaling

We identified sensory nerves as more abundant in triple-negative human breast tumors. Human triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) cells (MDA-MB-231, SUM159) were co-cultured with mice primary sensory neurons from dorsal root ganglia (DRG). Breast can-cer cells were found to attach to neurons and have higher migration speed and prolifera-tion rate. Species-specific RNA sequencing highlighted cell migration and adhesion among the most upregulated pathways for cancer cells in coculture. We identified a novel mechanism where cancer’s PlexinB3 interacted with neuron’s Sema5A to regulate attachment and migration along nerve fibers. These findings demonstrate that sensory nerves induced a drastic shift in TNBC cells gene expression, and that dirupting the nerve-cancer is a viable strategy to impede metastasis Overall design: Bulk RNA-seq of human TNBC cells and mouse DRG neurons in coculture