Fig. 1: Dysfunctional adipocytes promote tumor progression in breast and colon cancer models.

a Tumor volumes and weights after subcutaneous injection of MC-38 into 6- week- old WT and adipocyte specific BECN1 KO (BaKO) mice (WT, n = 15; BaKO, n = 8). b Tumor volumes (WT, n = 18; BaKO, n = 12) and weights (WT, n = 8; BaKO, n = 10) after mammary fat pad injection of EO771 into 6-week-old WT and BaKO mice. c Average growth kinetics and incidence of breast tumors generated from 10 mammary glands of MMTV-PyMT BECN1 WT mice (PyWT, n = 16) and MMTV-PyMT BECN1 KO mice (PyBaKO, n = 16). d Average tumor mass isolated from each mammary gland and a representative image of the tumors from PyWT (n = 10) and PyBaKO (n = 6) mice. Mice were sacrificed at 23 weeks of age. e Metastasized tumor nodules counted from the lungs of PyWT (n = 13) and PyBaKO (n = 8) mice at 23 weeks of age. Representative image was taken from mice sacrificed at 23 weeks of age. f Kaplan–Meier plot of survival curve of PyWT and PyBaKO mice. Log-rank test p-value (p) and hazard ratio (HR) between PyWT (n = 13) and PyBaKO (n = 8) mice are indicated. g Schematic timeline of adipocyte-cancer co-injection. (4-OHT: 4-hydroxytamoxifen). h Western blotting analysis of protein lysates isolated from immortalized stromal vascular cells (imSVCs) before being mixed with cancer cells. i Tumor volumes and weights after subcutaneous injection of 4T1 cells mixed with WT or Becn1 KO adipocytes. Mice were sacrificed on the 39th day following co-injection (n = 3,4). Statistics were calculated using two-tailed unpaired Student’s t-test (a, b, d, i), ordinary two-way ANOVA (a, b, c, e, i), and Kaplan–Meier survival curve analysis (f). Data are shown as mean \(\pm \,\)SEM; *p\(\,\le 0.05\), **p\(\,\le 0.01\), ***p\(\,\le 0.001\). Western blot results are representatives of at least three independent experiments.