BioProject

To delineate epithelial subpopulations in human mammary tissue, hematopoietic and endothelial cells were depleted from freshly isolated cell suspensions derived from reduction mammoplasties by fluorescence-activated cell sorting. More...

To delineate epithelial subpopulations in human mammary tissue, hematopoietic and endothelial cells were depleted from freshly isolated cell suspensions derived from reduction mammoplasties by fluorescence-activated cell sorting. The resultant Lin- population was fractionated into four distinct subpopulations using CD49f (α6-integrin) and epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM; also referred to as CD326 and ESA). Based on the immunohistochemical phenotype, and in vivo and in vitro functional assays, these subpopulations were identified as fibroblast-enriched stromal (CD49f -EpCAM-), mammary stem cell (MaSC)-enriched (CD49f hiEpCAM-), luminal progenitor (CD49f +EpCAM+), and mature luminal (CD49f –EpCAM+) cell subpopulations. Microarray profiling was used to derive gene expression signatures representative of these subpopulations using freshly sorted cells (>90% purity) from normal breast tissue. The four mammary cell subpopulations were found to have distinct gene expression profiles. Overall design: Four mammary cell subpopulations from three individual patient samples were analyzed. Less...