Figure 1. Mammary gland-derived adipocytes promote tumour growth in several breast cancer cell lines.

(a) Soft agar colony formation assays using a panel of breast cancer cell lines co-cultured with MGDAs. (b) Tumour growth assays in NOD/SCID/γ^null mice. Breast cancer cells were subcutaneously injected in both flanks of each mouse w/ or w/o MGDAs and tumour volumes were measured every 7 days. Four mice (n=4) were used for each group. (c) Co-injection of MGDAs in xenograft models increased the tumour weights in several breast cancer cell lines. (d) MGDAs co-injection failed to enhance the tumour growth of MDA-MB-468 cells in mouse tumorigenicity assays. The experiment in a was performed in technical triplicate and repeated at least twice with similar results. In a–d, data show means±s.d. *P<0.05 (Student's t-test).