Figure 2.

Downregulation of Cav-1 protein levels in CAFs versus NFs. (A) Fold changes in Cav-1 protein expression in CAFs vs. NFs generated from 11 breast cancer patients. Patient results were divided into three groups: (A), loss of Cav-1 expression; (B), no change in Cav-1 expression; and (C), increased Cav-1 expression. Note that most of the tumor-associated fibroblasts (from 8 of 11 patients) had a reduction in Cav-1 expression (n = 8), while one had no change, and two showed an increase. Thus, we focused our efforts on the patients showing a loss of Cav-1 expression. G corresponds to group and N to number of patients. (B) Immunoblot analysis of Cav-1 expression shows a decrease in Cav-1 levels in cancer-associated fibroblasts (C) when compared to adjacent normal fibroblasts (N). All the tumors analyzed had a matched normal tissue control from the same patient. β-actin was used as a loading control to assure equal loading. 30 μg of total protein lysate was loaded in each lane.