Expression profiling of NMuMG progression series

We have developed a progression series of increasingly metastatic cell lines generated from the normal mammary epithelial cell line, NMuMG, to distinguish between early changes in cancer initiation and metastasis-promoting alterations. In the absence of hnRNP E1 expression, NMuMG cells become both tumorigenic and metastatic, with metastases identified in the lungs of mammary fat pad injected NOD/SCID mice. The metastatic potential of the E1KD cell line can be enhanced by in vivo passaging which allows for the artificial selection of cells capable of forming primary tumors and lung metastases. This technique led to the isolation of increasingly aggressive metastatic cell lines, termed L1P and L2P that metastasize to lung. In addition, the M1P cell line were isolated from a primary mammary tumor.