Adefolaju Gbenga Anthony; Scholtz Kathrine Elizabeth & Hosie Margot Jill

The combined antiretroviral therapy (cART), a multidrug combination regimen, usually consisting Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors, non- Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors and Protease Inhibitors has altered the morbidity pattern affecting HIV-infected individuals to include non-AIDS-defining malignancies (nADMs). The speculation is rife; does cART induce or promote the progression of nADMs such as breast cancer? This study was therefore designed to investigate of the effects of some antiretroviral drugs (at clinically relevant concentrations) on the expression of anti-angiogenic gene; VEGF165b in two human breast cell lines; MCF-7 and MCF-10A by Real Time qPCR and immuno-fluorescence. All of the antiretroviral drugs and combinations tested produced patterns of slight up or downregulation of VEGF165b mRNA expression but the alterations did not attain statistical significance. They also did not alter VEGF165bprotein localisation in both cell lines. The findings reported here suggest that antiretroviral drugs probably do not influence the angiogenic pathway in the development of breast cancer in patients under the combined antiretroviral regimen.

KEY WORDS: Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors; Protease Inhibitors; VEGF165b; Breast cancer; MCF-7; MCF-10A.

ADEFOLAJU, G.A.; SCHOLTZ, K. E. & HOSIE, M. J. Antiangiogenic VEGF165b expression in human breast MCF-7 and MCF- 10A cells exposed to reverse transcriptase and protease inhibitors. Int. J. Morphol. 35(1):148-156, 2017.