**6. Conclusion**

As in other physiological processes, the use of conditional knockout mice and the application of high-throughput techniques have been very useful to understand that normal postlactation mammary gland involution relays on the fine-tune coordination of multiple signaling pathways. Although involution is a physiologically normal, developmentally orchestrated tissue-remodeling process, it shares striking similarities with pathologically induced wound-healing and tumor-promotional microenvironments. This highlights the relevance of further investigating this process, since it may yield novel therapeutic targets or prognostic markers for breast cancer. Importantly, studying this particular phase of mammary gland biology may help us to pinpoint subtle changes in a pro-oncogenic environment that determines the derailment from normal physiological to pathological tissue behavior.
