Transcriptional profiling of macrophage and tumor cell interactions in vitro

Abstract

Macrophages are important mediators of tumor progression and their function is broadly influenced by different microenvironmental stimuli. To understand the molecular basis of the tumor-supporting role of macrophages in aggressive breast cancer we co-cultured human peripheral monocytes with two breast cancer cell lines representing distinct aggressive cellular phenotype and transcriptionally profiled the changes occurring in both cells during in vitro activated crosstalk. Here we provide a detailed description of the experimental design, sample identity and analysis of the Illumina RNA-Seq data, which have been deposited into Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO).