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Research Paper|Volume 13, Issue 8|pp 11762—11773

Characterization of murine mammary stem/progenitor cells in a D-galactose-induced aging model

Hui Gao1,2,3, Yahui Liu2, Min Zheng1, Fan Zhao2, Hongzhu Wang2, Jiajian Yu2, Hao Jiang2, Danhan Wang1, Qiaoxiang Dong1,2
  • 1The Second Affiliated Hospital and Yuying Children's Hospital, Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou 325035, PR China
  • 2Institute of Environmental Safety and Human Health, Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou 325035, PR China
  • 3Key Laboratory of Fertility Preservation and Maintenance of Ministry of Education, Ningxia Medical University, Yinchuan 750004, PR China
Received: January 16, 2021Accepted: February 18, 2021Published: April 20, 2021
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.202870

Copyright: © 2021 Gao et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Aging plays an important role in many diseases, including breast cancer. Aged mammary stem/progenitor cells are perceived to be the cells of origin in breast tumorigenesis; however, the extensive use of mice who have aged naturally for research is hampered by cost, time, disease complications, and high mortality. In this study, we characterized murine mammary stem/progenitor cells in a D-galactose-induced accelerated aging model and compared them with findings from our earlier study on mice from natural aging. Our results showed that mammary glands in the D-galactose-induced aging model mimic natural aging in terms of pathological changes, epithelial cell composition, and mammary stem/progenitor cell function. These changes are accompanied by elevated inflammatory responses both systemically in the blood and locally in the mammary glands, which is similar in mice who age naturally. Our study for the first time evaluated the mammary glands and mammary stem/progenitor function in a D-galactose-induced aging model in rodents, and our findings suggest that D-galactose treatment can be used as a surrogate to study the role aged stem/progenitor cells play in breast tumorigenesis.