Project description:Hormones and growth factors accelerate cell proliferation of breast cancer cells, and these molecules are well investigated targets for drug development and application. The mechanisms of cell proliferation of breast cancers lacking estrogen receptor (ER) and HER2 have not been fully understood. The purpose of the present study is to find genes that are differentially expressed in breast cancers and that might significantly contribute to cell proliferation in these cancers. Forty tumor samples, consisting of ten each of immunohistochemically ER(+)/HER2(-), ER(+)/HER2(+), ER(-)/HER2(+), and ER(-)/HER2(-) cancer were analyzed using oligonucleotide microarrays. Both genes and tumor samples were subjected to hierarchical clustering. ER(+)/HER2(-) breast cancers and ER(-)/HER2(-) cancers tended to form a tumor cluster, but HER2 positive breast cancers were split into different tumor clusters. Significant differential expression between IHC-ER(-)/HER2(-) and other tumors was defined as having an expression level at least 2-fold higher or 2-fold lower, and analyzed by multi-step two-way ANOVA. Genes overexpressed differently in IHC-ER(-)/HER2(-) breast cancers compared to other all three types were 8 genes (FABP7, GABRP, GAL, CXCL13, CDC42EP4, C2F, FOXM1, CSDA), and underexpressed genes were nine including ITGB5, KIAA0310, MAGED2, PRSS11, SORL1, TGFB3, KRT18, CPE, BCAS1. No gene was directly related to cell proliferation such as cyclins, cyclin-dependent kinase, p53, p16, and the pRb and p21 families. We had a particular focus on a transcriptional factor E2F-5 from a list of genes overexpressed in ER negative breast cancers compared to ER positive breast cancers, and further examined. Gene amplification of E2F-5 was detected in 5/57 (8.8%) in breast cancers by FISH. No point mutation was found at the binding domain with DNA or dimerization partner of E2F-5. Immunohistochemically E2F-5 positive cancers were more frequent in ER(-)/HER2(-) cancer (14/27, 51.9%) than in other types of cancer (5/30, 16.7%) (p=0.05). E2F-5 positive cancers had higher Ki-67 labeling index (59.5%) than E2F-5 negative cancers (36.3%). E2F-5 positive cancers showed higher histological grade including metaplastic carcinoma, and worse clinical outcome with shorter disease free survival in node negative patients. In conclusion, we demonstrated that there is a population of breast cancer with overexpression of a cell cycle related transcriptional factor E2F-5. E2F-5 positive breast cancers were frequent in ER(-)/HER2(-) group with high Ki-67 labeling index, high histological grade and worse clinical outcome. Keywords: immunohistochemical phenotype

Project description:To better understand the biology of hormone receptor-positive and negative breast cancer and to identify methylated gene markers of disease progression, we performed a genome-wide methylation array analysis on 103 primary invasive breast cancers and 21 normal breast samples using the Illumina Infinium HumanMethylation27 array that queried 27,578 CpG loci. Estrogen and/or progesterone receptor-positive tumors displayed more hypermethylated loci than ER-negative tumors. However, the hypermethylated loci in ER-negative tumors were clustered closer to the transcriptional start site compared to ER-positive tumors. An ER-classifier set of CpG loci was identified, which independently partitioned primary tumors into ER-subtypes. Forty (32 novel, 8 previously known) CpG loci showed differential methylation specific to either ER-positive or ER-negative tumors. Each of the 40 ER-subtype-specific loci was validated in silico using an independent, publicly available methylome dataset from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). In addition, we identified 100 methylated CpG loci that were significantly associated with disease progression; the majority of these loci were informative particularly in ER-negative breast cancer. Overall, the set was highly enriched in homeobox containing genes. This pilot study demonstrates the robustness of the breast cancer methylome and illustrates its potential to stratify and reveal biological differences between ER-subtypes of breast cancer. Further, it defines candidate ER-specific markers and identifies potential markers predictive of outcome within ER subgroups. Frozen breast cancer tissues that were excised from patients with Stage 1-3 disease prior to treatment (n=103) were retrieved from Surgical Pathology at Johns Hopkins Hospital (Baltimore, Maryland) and confirmed to contain > 50% epithelial cells. Normal breast organoids were prepared by enzymatic digestion of reduction mammoplasty specimens (n=15; median patient age = 52 years, range 47 to 71). Normal ducts from breast tissue > 2 cm away from the tumor (n=6) were isolated from cryosections using laser-capture micro-dissection (PALM MicroBeam, Carl Zeiss Microimaging, North America). To determine the differences in breast cancer biology/behavior between ER subtypes, we characterized methylation patterns at 8376 selected CpG loci according to ER status. These loci met two criteria: 1) showed the most variation across primary tumors (SD >0.100) and 2) had probe detection p-values <0.0001. To develop an epigenomic signature that predicts outcome in patients with breast cancer, we conducted differential methylation analysis on primary tumors from recurrent versus non-recurrent breast cancers. We used a subgroup of 82 well-annotated, invasive breast tumors derived from the discovery set of 103 tumors that included 44 ER-positive (7 recurrences) and 38 ER-negative (11 recurrences) breast cancers and independently queried the ER-positive and ER-negative tumor groups

Project description:Background: We hypothesize that important genomic differences between breast cancer subtypes occur early in carcinogenesis. Therefore, gene expression might distinguish histologically normal breast epithelium (NlEpi) from breasts containing estrogen receptor positive (ER+) compared with estrogen receptor negative (ER-) cancers. Methods: We examined gene expression in 46 cases of microdissected NlEpi from previously untreated women undergoing breast cancer surgery. From 30 age-matched cases (15 ER+, 15 ER-) we used Affymetryix U133A arrays. From 16 independent cases (9ER+, 7 ER-), we validated seven selected genes using qPCR. We then compared gene expression between NlEpi and invasive breast cancer using 4 publicly available datasets. Results: 216 probes (corresponding to 198 unique genes) distinguished the NlEpi from breasts with ER+ (NlEpiER+) compared to ER- cancers (NlEpiER-). These include genes characteristic of ER+ and ER- cancers themselves, (e.g., ESR1, GATA3, and CX3CL1, FABP7, respectively). QPCR validated the microarray results in both a sampling of the 30 original cases (84%) and all of the 16 independent cases (77%). Gene expression in NlEpiER+ and NlEPIERNlEpiER- resembled gene expression in ER+ and ER- cancers, respectively: 36%-53% of the genes or probes examined in each the 4 external datasets overlapped between NlEpi and the corresponding cancer subtype. Conclusions: Gene expression differs in NlEpi of breasts containing ER+ compared to ER- breast cancers. These differences echo differences in ER+ and ER- invasive cancers. Thus, breast cancer subtypes may be detectable before histologic abnormalities. NlEpi gene expression may help define subtype-specific risk signatures, identify initial subtype specific genomic differences, and suggest new targets for subtype-specific prevention and therapy. We determined that 216 probesets significantly differed between histologically normal epithelium from ER+ breast cancer patients and from ER- breast cancer patients, and that gene expression in each type of histologically normal epithelium resembles expression of the corresponding subtype of invasive breast cancer (i.e., ER+ or ER-). These findings suggest that characteristic features of breast cancer subtypes are detectable prior to any histologic abnormality. This suggestion has implications for understanding breast cancer biology and devising new tools for assessing breast cancer risk.

Project description:Background: We hypothesize that important genomic differences between breast cancer subtypes occur early in carcinogenesis. Therefore, gene expression might distinguish histologically normal breast epithelium (NlEpi) from breasts containing estrogen receptor positive (ER+) compared with estrogen receptor negative (ER-) cancers. Methods: We examined gene expression in 46 cases of microdissected NlEpi from previously untreated women undergoing breast cancer surgery. From 30 age-matched cases (15 ER+, 15 ER-) we used Affymetryix U133A arrays. From 16 independent cases (9ER+, 7 ER-), we validated seven selected genes using qPCR. We then compared gene expression between NlEpi and invasive breast cancer using 4 publicly available datasets. Results: 216 probes (corresponding to 198 unique genes) distinguished the NlEpi from breasts with ER+ (NlEpiER+) compared to ER- cancers (NlEpiER-). These include genes characteristic of ER+ and ER- cancers themselves, (e.g., ESR1, GATA3, and CX3CL1, FABP7, respectively). QPCR validated the microarray results in both a sampling of the 30 original cases (84%) and all of the 16 independent cases (77%). Gene expression in NlEpiER+ and NlEPIERNlEpiER- resembled gene expression in ER+ and ER- cancers, respectively: 36%-53% of the genes or probes examined in each the 4 external datasets overlapped between NlEpi and the corresponding cancer subtype. Conclusions: Gene expression differs in NlEpi of breasts containing ER+ compared to ER- breast cancers. These differences echo differences in ER+ and ER- invasive cancers. Thus, breast cancer subtypes may be detectable before histologic abnormalities. NlEpi gene expression may help define subtype-specific risk signatures, identify initial subtype specific genomic differences, and suggest new targets for subtype-specific prevention and therapy. We determined that 216 probesets significantly differed between histologically normal epithelium from ER+ breast cancer patients and from ER- breast cancer patients, and that gene expression in each type of histologically normal epithelium resembles expression of the corresponding subtype of invasive breast cancer (i.e., ER+ or ER-). These findings suggest that characteristic features of breast cancer subtypes are detectable prior to any histologic abnormality. This suggestion has implications for understanding breast cancer biology and devising new tools for assessing breast cancer risk. 30 total laser capture microdissected histologically normal breast tissue samples were analyzed with Affymetrix HU133A microarrays. All samples were age-matched between histologically normal epithelial samples from ER+ breast cancer patients (n=15) and histologically normal epithelial samples from ER- breast cancer patients (n=15). Sample numbers correspond to individual patient samples. Of the 4 publicly available datasets mentioned above, the only dataset with a GEO number was GSE3494, corresponding to the Miller dataset. The supplementary file below lists the 251 Samples used from the GSE3494 study. We did not reanalyze the data - there was no change made to the Miller dataset; we only used these data for confirmation of our own dataset.

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A methyl-deviator epigenotype of estrogen-receptor-positive breast carcinoma is associated with malignant biology

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A methyl-deviator epigenotype of estrogen receptor-positive breast carcinoma is associated with malignant biology.

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