Investigating The Role Of Vitamin D3 On Genomic Instability In Mcf-7 Human Breast Cancer Cells

Abstract: Vitamin D is demonstrated significant impact in modifying cellular and genomic functions in many diseases including cancers. Previous investigations supported genomic instability as one of the hallmark of cancer. The genomic instability in breast cancer cells has long been investigated and indicated by formation of micronucleus within the cancer cells. MCF-7 is the most commonly used breast cancer cell line that expresses the cell surface vitamin D3 receptor (VDR), has a high adaptability and can evolve overtime in the laboratory environment. These properties therefore make it ideal for assessing genomic instability to understand breast cancer heterogeneity and evolution. Nevertheless, the level of micronuclei formation due to chromosomal instability has yet not been critically assessed within malignant MCF-7 human breast cancer cell lines. Therefore, the origin of this study is based on the genomic relationship between Vitamin D3 and MCF-7 breast cancer cells. A micronucleus assay was carried out to analyse the number of micronuclei in both test and control slides. A higher number of cells were obtained in Giemsa stained slides of the cytochalasin treated cells grown in the presence and absence of Vitamin D3. A total 150 cells were examined for the presence of micronuclei (MN-BN cells) using digital microscope and statistical analysis carried out to test the hypothesis. According to the visual analysis of results, the number of micronucleus in the cells decreases with the addition of vitamin D3 in the treated MCF-7 cells, however, statistical analysis differ with this association. The finding of this study therefore suggests that, the relationship between genomic instability and Vitamin D3 is insignificant in MCF-7 human breast cancer cell lines. However, we expect this method to open up a new line for further investigation on the effect of vitamin D3 on breast cancer genomic instability using different D3 concentration and perhaps in different breast cancer cell lines.

Key words: Breast cancer, MCF-7 cell lines, VitaminD3, Micronuclei, genomic instability, Cytochalasin-B, VDR