Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Oncol. Jun 24, 2022; 13(6): 505-519
Published online Jun 24, 2022. doi: 10.5306/wjco.v13.i6.505
Nicotinic receptors modulate antitumor therapy response in triple negative breast cancer cells
Alejandro Español, Yamila Sanchez, Agustina Salem, Jaqueline Obregon, Maria Elena Sales
Alejandro Español, Yamila Sanchez, Agustina Salem, Jaqueline Obregon, Maria Elena Sales, Laboratory of Immunopharmacology and Tumor Biology, CEFYBO CONICET University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires C1121ABG, Argentina
Author contributions: Español A performed cell assays, supervised the work, analyzed and interpreted the data, and wrote the manuscript; Sanchez Y and Salem A performed cell assays and contributed to the writing of the manuscript; Obregon J carried out lab work as part of her grade thesis, and helped to analyze and interpret the data; Sales ME supervised the work and edited the manuscript draft; all authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Supported by University of Buenos Aires (UBA) UBACYT 2018-2022, No. 20020170100227; National Research Council (CONICET) PIP 2015-2017, No. 2015-0239; and National Agency for Scientific and Technological Promotion (ANPCyT) PICT 2015-2017, No. 2015-2396.
Institutional review board statement: In the realization of the manuscript, no human samples or patients were used, so the authorization of the Institutional Review Board was not required.
Institutional animal care and use committee statement: In the realization of the manuscript, no animals were used, so the authorization of the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee was not required.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors certify that they have no conflicts of interest (including but not limited to commercial, personal, political, intellectual or religious interests) for this article.
Data sharing statement: The technical appendix, statistical code, and dataset are available from the corresponding author at aespanol@fmed.uba.ar. Participants gave informed consent for data sharing.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Alejandro Español, PhD, Research Scientist, Laboratory of Immunopharmacology and Tumor Biology, CEFYBO CONICET University of Buenos Aires, Paraguay 2155 16th Floor, Buenos Aires C1121ABG, Argentina. aespan_1999@yahoo.com
Received: December 27, 2021
Peer-review started: December 27, 2021
First decision: February 15, 2022
Revised: February 24, 2022
Accepted: April 26, 2022
Article in press: April 26, 2022
Published online: June 24, 2022
Core Tip

Core Tip: Smokers with lung tumors are more likely to generate resistance to chemotherapy than non-smokers. However, little is known about the effect of nicotinic activation during the treatment of breast cancer, a cancer which arises close to the lung. In triple negative human breast cells, nicotine reduces the chemotherapeutic effect of paclitaxel through the participation of several kinases, as well as by modulating ATP “binding cassette” G2 drug transporter expression and inducing resistance to treatment. These results indicate that nicotinic acetylcholine receptors are a new possible target in antitumor therapy for this subtype of breast cancer.