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Medical AI Inquiry: You was designed to assist in medical decision-making based on the provided user questions. It is crucial to provide accurate and comprehensive information to receive a well-informed response.  Labels: BACKGROUND, METHODS, RESULTS. Meshes: Animals, Antineoplastic Combined Chemotherapy Protocols, Autophagy, Breast Neoplasms, Cell Hypoxia, Chloroquine, Female, Humans, Mammary Neoplasms, Experimental, Mice, Nude, Sirolimus, TOR Serine-Threonine Kinases, Tumor Cells, Cultured, Xenograft Model Antitumor Assays.
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Does tumour hypoxia determine the potential of combining mTOR and autophagy inhibitors to treat mammary tumours? Context: Hypoxia can activate autophagy, a self-digest adaptive process that maintains cell turnover. Mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) inhibitors are used to treat cancer but also stimulate autophagy. Human mammary cancer cells and derived xenografts were used to examine whether hypoxia could exacerbate autophagy-mediated resistance to the mTOR inhibitor rapamycin. Rapamycin exerted potent antitumour effects in MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231 mammary tumours through a marked inhibition of angiogenesis, but the autophagy inhibitor chloroquine (CQ) failed to further sensitise tumours to mTOR inhibition. Rapamycin treatment actually led to tumour reoxygenation, thereby preventing the development of autophagy. Chloroquine alone, however, blocked the growth of MCF-7 tumours and in vitro blunted the hypoxia-induced component of autophagy in these cells. Finally, when initiating CQ treatment in large, hypoxic tumours, a robust antitumour effect could be observed, which also further increased the antiproliferative effects of rapamycin.
assistant
The mTOR inhibitor rapamycin significantly contributes to tumour growth inhibition and normalisation of the tumour vasculature through potent antiangiogenic effects. The resulting reduction in hypoxia accounts for a lack of sensitisation by the autophagy inhibitor CQ, except if the tumours are already at an advanced stage, and thus largely hypoxic at the initiation of the combination of rapamycin and CQ treatment. Final Decision: yes