Project description:Aberrant DNA methylation is frequently observed in breast cancer. However, the relationship between methylation patterns and the heterogeneity of breast cancer has not been comprehensively characterized. Whole-genome DNA methylation analysis using 450K Illumina BeadArrays was performed on 188 human breast tumors. Unsupervised bootstrap consensus clustering was performed to identify DNA methylation epigenetic subgroups (epitypes). The Cancer Genome Atlas data, incluing methylation profiles of 669 human breast tumors, was utilized for validation. The identified epitypes were characterized by integration with publicly available genome-wide data, including gene expression levels, DNA copy numbers, whole-exome sequencing data, and chromatin states. We identified seven breast cancer epitypes. One epitype was distinctly associated with basal-like tumors and with BRCA1 mutations, one epitype contained a subset of ERBB2-amplified tumors characterized by multiple additional amplifications and the most complex genomes, and one epitype displayed a methylation profile similar to normal epithelial cells. Luminal tumors were stratified into the remaining four epitypes, with differences in promoter hypermethylation, global hypomethylation, proliferative rates and genomic instability. We observed two dominant patterns of aberrant methylation in breast cancer. One pattern, constitutively methylated in both basal-like and luminal breast cancer, was linked to genes with promoters in a Polycomb-repressed state in normal epithelial cells and displayed no correlation to gene expression levels. The second pattern correlated with gene expression levels and was associated with methylation in luminal tumors and genes with active promoters in normal epithelial cells. Our results suggest that hypermethylation patterns in basal-like breast cancer may have limited influence on tumor progression and instead reflects the repressed chromatin state of the tissue of origin. On the contrary, hypermethylation patterns specific to luminal breast cancer influence gene expression, may contribute to tumor progression, and may present an actionable epigenetic alteration in some luminal breast cancers. Genome-wide DNA methylation analysis of 188 breast cancers using Illumina Human Methylation 450K Beadchips.

Project description:Aberrant DNA methylation is frequently observed in breast cancer. However, the relationship between methylation patterns and the heterogeneity of breast cancer has not been comprehensively characterized. Whole-genome DNA methylation analysis using 450K Illumina BeadArrays was performed on 188 human breast tumors. Unsupervised bootstrap consensus clustering was performed to identify DNA methylation epigenetic subgroups (epitypes). The Cancer Genome Atlas data, incluing methylation profiles of 669 human breast tumors, was utilized for validation. The identified epitypes were characterized by integration with publicly available genome-wide data, including gene expression levels, DNA copy numbers, whole-exome sequencing data, and chromatin states. We identified seven breast cancer epitypes. One epitype was distinctly associated with basal-like tumors and with BRCA1 mutations, one epitype contained a subset of ERBB2-amplified tumors characterized by multiple additional amplifications and the most complex genomes, and one epitype displayed a methylation profile similar to normal epithelial cells. Luminal tumors were stratified into the remaining four epitypes, with differences in promoter hypermethylation, global hypomethylation, proliferative rates and genomic instability. We observed two dominant patterns of aberrant methylation in breast cancer. One pattern, constitutively methylated in both basal-like and luminal breast cancer, was linked to genes with promoters in a Polycomb-repressed state in normal epithelial cells and displayed no correlation to gene expression levels. The second pattern correlated with gene expression levels and was associated with methylation in luminal tumors and genes with active promoters in normal epithelial cells. Our results suggest that hypermethylation patterns in basal-like breast cancer may have limited influence on tumor progression and instead reflects the repressed chromatin state of the tissue of origin. On the contrary, hypermethylation patterns specific to luminal breast cancer influence gene expression, may contribute to tumor progression, and may present an actionable epigenetic alteration in some luminal breast cancers.

Project description:Introduction: Five different molecular subtypes of breast cancer have been identified through gene expression profiling. Each subtype has a characteristic expression pattern suggested to partly depend on cellular origin. We aimed to investigate whether the molecular subtypes also display distinct methylation profiles. Methods: We analysed methylation status of 807 cancer-related genes in 189 fresh frozen primary breast tumours and four normal breast tissue samples using an array-based methylation assay. Results: Unsupervised analysis revealed three groups of breast cancer with characteristic methylation patterns. The three groups were associated with the luminal A, luminal B and basal-like molecular subtypes of breast cancer, respectively, whereas cancers of the HER2-enriched and normal-like subtypes were distributed among the three groups. The methylation frequencies were significantly different between subtypes, with luminal B and basal-like tumours being most and least frequently methylated, respectively. Moreover, targets of the polycomb repressor complex in breast cancer and embryonic stem cells were more methylated in luminal B tumours than in other tumours. BRCA2-mutated tumours had a particularly high degree of methylation. Finally, by utilizing gene expression data, we observed that a large fraction of genes reported as having subtype-specific expression patterns might be regulated through methylation. Conclusions: We have found that breast cancers of the basal-like, luminal A and luminal B molecular subtypes harbour specific methylation profiles. Our results suggest that methylation may play an important role in the development of breast cancers. DNA methylation profiling of breast cancer samples and normal breast tissue samples. The Illumina GoldenGate Methylation Cancer Panel I was used to obtain DNA methylation profiles across approximately 1500 CpGs. Samples included 189 breast cancer samples and 4 normal breast tissue samples. Bisulphite converted DNA from the samples were hybridised to the Illumina GoldenGate Methylation Cancer Panel I

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