The Comparative Invasiveness of Endometriotic Cell Lines to Breast and Endometrial Cancer Cell Lines

Endometriosis is an invasive condition that affects 10% of women (and people assigned as female at birth) worldwide. The purpose of this study was to characterize the relative invasiveness of three available endometriotic cell lines (EEC12Z, iEc-ESCs, tHESCs) to cancer cell lines (MDA-MB-231, SW1353 and EM-E6/E7/TERT) and assess whether the relative invasiveness was consistent across different invasion assays. All cell lines were subjected to transwell, spheroid drop, and spheroid-gel invasion assays, and stained for vimentin, cytokeratin, E-Cadherin and N-Cadherin to assess changes in expression. In all assays, endometriotic cell lines showed comparable invasiveness to the cancer cell lines used in this study, with no significant differences in invasiveness identified. EEC12Z cells that had invaded within the assay periods showed declines in E-Cadherin expression compared to cells that had not invaded within the assay period, without significant changes in N-Cadherin expression, which may support the hypothesis that an epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition is an influence on the invasiveness shown by this peritoneal endometriosis cell line.