Math in the Mammary Tree: Tool May Warn of Early Cancer Risk

Breast ducts grow like tree branches during puberty and pregnancy, a pattern key to cancer research.

Branching isn’t unique to trees - it’s a vital biological process in animals that allows organs to carry out complex tasks. Structures resembling branches develop in organs like the lungs, kidneys, and breasts ().

Remarkably, in female mammary glands, most branching occurs long after birth, during puberty, and again in pregnancy, when milk ducts expand in preparation for breastfeeding.

Disruptions in this process have been linked to breast cancer, yet analyzing mammary branching remains a challenging and time-intensive task.

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Did You Know?
A vast majority of #breastcancers originate in the mammary ducts. In fact, invasive #ductalcarcinoma, which begins in these #milkducts, is the most common type of breast cancer, accounting for about 80% of all diagnoses. #breasthealth #mammaryglands #breastcancerawareness #medindia

A New Tool to Study Mammary Gland Branching

Now, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) researchers have developed a tool to quickly quantify changes in the branches of mouse mammary glands. The system, called MaGNet, was created by Steven Lewis, Lucia Téllez Pérez, and Samantha Henry, three graduate students in CSHL’s dos Santos lab. It could one day be used to study how hormonal changes and treatments affect mammary glands or even to detect early warning signs of breast cancer.

Inspiration Behind MaGNet

Lewis had the idea for MaGNet—the Mammary Gland Network analysis tool—after seeing CSHL Associate Professor Saket Navlakha give a talk at the Lab. Lewis wondered if a mathematical model that Navlakha’s team applied to plants could be translated to mammary glands. “It felt like a natural connection to another branching structure,” he says.

Typically, researchers studying mouse mammary glands need to cut thin slices of breast tissue, analyze them under a microscope, and manually count the ducts and branches in each slice. The process is “very time-consuming and sometimes inconsistent,” Henry says. “Often, you don’t get the entire architecture of the mammary gland.”

How MaGNet Works

MaGNet was built to precisely compare stained images of the mammary gland. Researchers working with the system simply trace the branches and use software called NetworkX to plot them as networks. From there, computer code analyzes the networks and quantifies the data. “With this tool, we can measure the total length of the ductile tree as well as the number of ducts, alveoli, and branching structures,” Téllez Pérez says. “It’s very easy to quickly plot different networks and run tests.”

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Future Applications and Vision

Right now, MaGNet is only used in mice. However, the code could be tweaked for any branching system. The researchers envision MaGNet eventually being used to learn how certain conditions, like infections—or life events, like pregnancy and menopause—affect cancer risk.

It could also help with early diagnosis. “We’re always hunting for warning signs that arise before you can feel a lump or see anything on a mammogram or ultrasound,” Lewis says. “Imagine an automated tool could say there’s no tumor yet, but there are changes detectable. That’s our hope, our dream.”

Reference:

MaGNet: A Network-Based Method for Quantitative Analysis of the Mammary Ductal Tree in Developing Female Mice - (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12474597/)

Source-Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory