Differentiation of mammary stem cells in vivo and in vitro.

The fully differentiated cells of the rat mammary parenchyma, the ductal epithelial, alveolar, and myoepithelial cells, are distinguished by their ultrastructure and by their accumulation of immunocytochemically detectable marker proteins. The different cell types probably develop from primative ductal structures called terminal end buds, which are present in the developing rat mammary glands, and these structures contain relatively undifferentiated cells. Clonal epithelial stem cell lines, obtained from normal rat mammary glands or benign mammary tumors, differentiate under appropriate conditions along a pathway to droplet-cell/doming cultures of primative alveolarlike cells. Under different culture conditions, the epithelial stem cells differentiate along a separate pathway to myoepitheliallike cells. They accumulate some of the specific marker proteins of myoepithelial cells in vivo, including type IV collagen, laminin, and Thy-1 antigen. In addition, these myoepitheliallike cells in culture contain an abundance of a potential calcium-binding protein, p9Ka, which also occurs in myoepithelial cells of histological sections from mammary glands. The accumulation of type IV collagen, laminin, Thy-1, and p9Ka occurs asynchronously along the pathway to the myoepitheliallike cells in vitro. Furthermore, the steady-state levels of these different marker proteins arise by alterations in the controls at the transcriptional, the posttranscriptional processing, and the translational stages of their production. These results suggest a stepwise control of synthesis of myoepithelial cell marker proteins, and in the case of p9Ka and Thy-1 antigen, this altered control may arise through their possession of novel transcriptional promoters.