Tumor-associated stroma derived from primary clinical breast cancer samples (II)
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ABSTRACT: Breast cancer is an extremely heterogeneous disease. This heterogeneity can be observed at multiple levels, including gene expression, chromosomal aberrations, and disease pathology. A clear understanding of these differences is important since they impact upon treatment efficacy and clinical outcome. Many studies have shown that the tumor microenvironment also plays a critical role in cancer initiation and progression. Although genomic technologies have been used to gain a better understanding of the impact of gene expression heterogeneity on breast cancer outcome by identifying gene expression signatures associated with clinical outcome, histopathological breast cancer subtypes, and a variety of cancer--related pathways and processes, relatively little is known about the influence of of heterogeneity in the tumor microenvironment on these factors. We show that gene expression in the breast tumor microenvironment is highly heterogeneous, identifying at least six different classes of tumor stroma with distinct expression patterns and distinct biological processes. Two of these classes recapitulate the processes identified in the stroma--derived prognostic predictor, while the others are new classes of stroma associated with distinct clinical outcomes. One of these is associated with matrix remodeling and is strongly associated with the basal molecular subtype of breast cancer. The remainder are independent of the previously published molecular subtypes of breast cancer. Additionally, based on independent data from over 800 tumors, the combinations of stroma classes and breast cancer subtypes identify new subgroups of breast tumors that show better discrimination between good and poor outcome individuals than the molecular breast cancer subtypes or the stroma classes alone, suggesting a novel classification scheme for breast cancer . This further demonstrates an important role for the tumor microenvironment in defining breast cancer heterogeneity, with a consequent impact upon clinical outcome.
ORGANISM(S): Homo sapiens
PROVIDER: GSE12622 | GEO | 2011/01/15
SECONDARY ACCESSION(S): PRJNA113087
REPOSITORIES: GEO
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