The cooked meat-derived mammary carcinogen 2-amino-1-methyl-6-phenylimidazo[4,5-b]pyridine (PhIP) elicits estrogenic-like microRNA responses in breast cancer cells.

The cooking of meat results in the generation of heterocyclic amines (HCA), the most abundant of which is 2-amino-1-methyl-6-phenylimidazo[4,5-b]pyridine (PhIP). Data from epidemiological, mechanistic, and animal studies indicate that PhIP could be causally linked to breast cancer incidence. Besides the established DNA damaging and mutagenic activities of PhIP, the chemical is reported to have oestrogenic activity that could contribute to its tissue specific carcinogenicity. In this study we investigated the effect of treatment with PhIP and 17-β-estradiol (E2) on global microRNA (miRNA) expression of the oestrogen responsive MCF-7 human breast adenocarcinoma cell line. PhIP and E2 caused widespread and largely over-lapping effects on miRNA expression, with many of the commonly affected miRNA reported to be regulated by oestrogen and have been implicated in the initiation and progression of breast cancer. The regulatory activity of the miRNAs we show here to be responsive to PhIP treatment, are also predicted to mediate cellular phenotypes that are associated with PhIP exposure. Consequently, this study offers further support to the ability of PhIP to induce widespread effects via activation of oestrogen receptor alpha (ERα). Moreover, this study indicates that deregulation of miRNA by PhIP could potentially be an important non-DNA-damaging carcinogenic mechanism in breast cancer.