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 Bulk RNA-seq of human TNBC cells and mouse DRG neurons in coculture