Effect Of Thalidomide On VEGF-C And Its Receptor Expression In Human Breast Cancer Cell Lines

Objective: This experiment aimed to evaluate the effect of thalidomide on the expression of vascular endothelial growth factor-C (VEGF-C) and its receptor (vascular endothelial growth factor receptor-2, VEGFR-2) in breast cancer cell lines in vitro to further investigate possible mechanism of its role as angiogenesis inhibitor and feasibility to cure breast cancer.Methods: Selecting two-stub classic human breast cancer cell lines, MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231, using MTT assay to detect the growth rate among different thalidomide concentration groups (6,30,60,120μg/ml)and different time groups (24,48,72h), in order to choose proper drug concentration and action time. According to the result of MTT, establishing control and experimental group, extracting total RNA of each group cell, assessing the integrality and content of RNA, the level of VEGF-C,KDRmRNA expression was examined by semiquantitative RT-PCR technique in the two-stub cell lines treated before and after with thalidomide. The expression of VEGF-C,KDR protein was qualitationly studied by immunocytochemistry staining and was semi-quantitately examined by flow cytometry in cell lines treated before and after with thalidomide.