Administration of camel milk (orally) and its exosomes (orally and by local injection) decreased breast tumor progression as evident by ( a) higher apoptosis (indicated by higher DNA fragmentation, caspase-3 activity, Bax gene expression, and lower Bcl2 gene expression), ( b) remarkable inhibition of oxidative stress (decrease in MDA levels and iNOS gene expression); ( c) induction of antioxidant status (increased activities of SOD, CAT, and GPX), ( d) notable reduction in expression of inflammation-( IL1b, NFκB), angiogenesis-( VEGF) and metastasis-( MMP9, ICAM1) related genes; and ( e) higher immune response (high number of CD<sup>+</sup>4, CD<sup>+</sup>8, NK1.1 T cells in spleen).
Promoter region analysis of genes that are up-regulated in human ER-negative breast tumors with high NOS2 expression revealed that the Ets-binding sequence is the only common promoter element present in all of these genes, indicating that Ets-1 is the key transcriptional factor down-stream of oncogenic NOS2-signaling.
We employed immunohistochemistry to examine the influence of TIMP-1 on the functional relationship between NOS2 and phosphorylated Akt in breast tumors and found that NOS2-associated Akt phosphorylation was significantly increased in tumors expressing high TIMP-1, indicating that TIMP-1 may further enhance NO-induced Akt pathway activation.
To investigate whether NOS2 levels influence survival of breast cancer patients, we examined NOS2 expression and its association with tumor markers and survival in 248 breast tumors.