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Publication: Megakaryocytes in Breast Cancer

The Battinelli lab recently published that breast cancer–induced alterations in megakaryocytes lead to qualitative changes to platelets that promote tumor metastasis.

In this study, we used a spontaneous murine model of breast cancer to show that tumor burden reduced megakaryocyte number and size and disrupted polyploidization. Single-cell RNA sequencing demonstrated that megakaryocytes from tumor-bearing mice exhibit a pro-inflammatory phenotype, which was reflected in platelets, suggesting that tumor-induced alterations to megakaryocytes are passed on to their platelet progeny, which promoted in vitro tumor cell invasion and tumor cell lung colonization to a greater extent than platelets from wild-type animals.

Read the article here

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