Fig. 1

(a) Bubble plot of IPA pathway analysis in tumor cells cultured with both EBV transformed B cells or primary peripheral B cells revealed upregulation of regulators related to the NFKB-IL-1 pathway. The size of the bubble indicates the number of upregulated genes in the pathway. (b) Increases in fold change of IL-1β gene expression of in tumor cells co-cultured for 24 h with an EBV transformed B cell line as determined by real-time PCR. (c) Significant increase in IL-1β protein release from tumor cells is observed by ELISA in MCF-7 and SUM159 cell supernatants 12 h following 24-h co-culture with EBV-B cells. (d) Significant increases in fold change in gene expression of IL-1β target compared to control cells as determined by real-time PCR in tumor cell lines 24 h after co-culture with an EBV transformed B cell line. (e) Significant increases in fold change of IL-1β and IL-8 gene expression by real-time PCR of in tumor cells co-cultured for 24 h with primary peripheral B cells from four independent TNBC patients. Graphs show the mean of at least three independent experiments. Error bars represent standard deviations and significance is indicated by asterisk, *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.