Postlactational Involution: Molecular Mechanisms and Relevance for Breast Cancer Development

EDITH C. KORDON; OMAR A. COSO

Current Topics in Lactation

InTech Open

Año: 2017; p. 41 - 53

Mammals constitute a class of vertebrates (Mammalia) that includes some of the largest and intelligent animals on the planet. Primates and therefore human beings are representative mammals that nurse their young offspring with milk, secreted from special glands not fully developed unless required when the female mammals undergo pregnancy. Mammary gland tissue changes appearance and functionality in different sequential steps. The tissue of virgin, pregnant or lactating mammary glands changes controlled by finely regulated physiological processes. A fourth stage (involution), triggered upon weaning, involves remodeling and the gland regresses to resemble a pre-pregnant stage. This highly complex process characterized by a high degree of epithelial cell death, and tissue remodeling can be divided itself in phases, which can be independent of each other. The present article describes a variety of signaling pathway components, transcription factors and mRNA stabilization proteins that play a role in the regulation of cell fate during the involution process. These molecular actors are finely related in health to trigger the delicate mechanism that govern involution after weaning, leaving the gland in a latent stage until needed again. The pregnant, lactating and involution stages are repeated in cycles with each pregnancy. Deregulation may contribute to Cancer development.