Dietary soy effects on early rat mammary gland development

The linkage between nutrition and cancer prevention is an intriguing concept that is gaining widespread support based on epidemiological and animal studies. Multiple mechanisms likely underlie dietary protection against cancer, with effects influenced by target tissue response, cell-cell interactions and developmental context. Given the negative correlation between breast cancer incidence and intake of soy foods by Asian women, and the increasing consumption of soy protein-based formula by infants in the Western world, we have studied soy protein isolate (SPI) used in most infant formula as a paradigm to evaluate diet as a risk factor in a rodent model of mammary cancer. We previously demonstrated that lifetime exposure to dietary SPI reduced the incidence of N-methyl-N-nitrosourea-induced mammary tumors in young adult rats relative to those fed the control diet Casein (CAS). This protection was associated with increased tumor suppressor PTEN and decreased Wnt signaling component expression in mammary epithelial cells at postnatal day (PND) 50 prior to carcinogen insult. To identify early events contributing to mammary tumor suppression by diet, we used Affymetrix RAE230A GeneChips containing 14280 probe sets and the GeneSpring Robust Multi-array program to analyze genomic profiles of mammary glands of prepubertal (PND21) rats lifetime exposed to SPI or CAS. Female SD rats are exposed to either casein/soy protein isolate based AIN-93G diet since gestation day 4 till weaning. Whole mammary gland were harvested for the gene analysis by microarray.