Human breast cancer cell lines MDA-MB-231, SK-BR-3, and MCF-7 were obtained from the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The LD cell line was established by our laboratory (Department of Pathogenic Biology and Immunology, School of Medicine, Southeast University, Nanjing, China) from a human breast cancer postsurgery sample (8 (link)). All cells were cultured in Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium containing 10% fetal bovine serum (GibcoTM; Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc.). Lipofectamine™ 2000 reagent was obtained from Invitrogen; Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc. TGF-β1 (Novoprotein Scientific, Inc.) and SB431542 (selective inhibitor of TGF-βRI) (cat. no. A8249; APeXBIO Technology LLC) were used to treat cells.