Myc activation in breast cancer is due to p53-loss and sustains self-renewal of cancer stem cells (RNA-Seq)

Purpose: discover the downstream pathways and the mechanism of target activation by the p53:Myc axis in normal mammary and cancer stem cells Methods: we established mammosphere culture from normal and tumoral murine mammary glands and extracted RNA for expression analysis at passage 3 of the serial replating assay Results: These data demonstrate the existence of a set of 189 p53 and Myc common targets, which are implicated in the regulation of mitosis and are up-regulated in the ErbB2-tumor mammospheres, and suggest that these genes are crucial for the regulation of CSC numbers. Overall design: Examination of expression profile in mammospheres derived from WT, L-MyCER, ErbB2-tumor and p53-/- murine mammary cells