Macrophage infiltration promotes invasiveness of breast cancer cells via activating long non-coding RNA UCA1.

There is now considerable evidence supporting the view that macrophage infiltration is playing a critical role in the proliferation and progression of breast cancer but the underlying molecular mechanisms remain largely unknown. To this end, using long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) expression profiling, we examined changes in lncRNA expression in breast cancer cells treated with conditioned medium (CM) from cultured human THP-1 macrophages. We found that treatment with macrophage CM induced the expression of numerous lncRNAs, including urothelial cancer associated 1 (UCA1).