abnormal epithelial cells in mouse mammary gland - (Oct/24/2011 )

Dear all,

I just begin to do mouse work. When I do H&E staining for paraffin embed section of mouse mammary gland, I found there are some abnormal shape epithelial cells, the nucleus are triangle or elongated not round (pls see the attached file, red arrow). Does anybody know what's these cells?

One thing I was thinking is that the mouse mammary gland undergoes involution, so the epithelial cells are "eaten" by surrounding nonprofessional phagocytes (they are also epithelial cells just because they have the ability to phagocytosis).

Thanks,

Bo

It could be that they are cells that have been sectioned at different a different angle than what you would expect. It could also be some sort of proliferative epithelium/fibrobastic type cell?

- I'm not really a histologist though.