The clinical relevance of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) in breast cancer (BC) is not firmly established. We aimed to validate previous prognostic findings in triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) and investigate predictive associations with trastuzumab benefit in HER2 overexpressing disease (HER2+).
No associated publication
Specimen part, Disease stage
View SamplesThe FinHER trial is a multicentre phase 3 randomised adjuvant breast cancer trial that enrolled 1010 patients. The women were randomly assigned to receive three cycles of docetaxel or vinorelbine, followed by three cycles of fluorouracil, epirubicin, and cyclophosphamide.
Integrative proteomic and gene expression analysis identify potential biomarkers for adjuvant trastuzumab resistance: analysis from the Fin-her phase III randomized trial.
Age, Disease stage
View SamplesUsing a dataset of 54 pregnant and 113 age/stage-matched non-pregnant breast cancer patients with complete clinical and survival data; we evaluated the pattern of hot spot somatic mutations and performed transcriptomic profiling using Sequenom and Affymetrix, respectively. Breast cancer molecular subtypes were defined using PAM50 and 3-Gene classifiers. We performed Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) to evaluate pathways associated with diagnosis during pregnancy. We investigated the differential expression of cancer-related genes and published gene sets according to pregnancy. We finally investigated genes associated with disease-free survival.
Biology of breast cancer during pregnancy using genomic profiling.
Age, Disease stage
View SamplesThe human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) gene encodes a tyrosine kinase receptor that controls important signal transduction pathways in breast cancer. Amplification and overexpression of the HER2 gene occurs in approximately 20% of breast cancers and is associated with an aggressive clinical phenotype. Trastuzumab, a humanized monoclonal antibody that targets HER2 showed exceptional efficacy in the treatment of breast cancer. In the adjuvant treatment of breast cancer patients, five randomized trials showed significant benefit of trastuzumab, with a reduction in the rate of recurrence of approximately 50% and improvement in the rate of survival of approximately 30%. In the current study, positive early stage breast cancer samples treated with adjuvant trastuzumab provided by institute Jules Bordet (IJB) and KUL. Gene expression and clinical outcome data were available. to better understand the genetic regulations and effects of the trastuzumab, we profile the the genes expression of positive early stage breast cancer samples treated with adjuvant trastuzumab.
No associated publication
Age, Specimen part, Treatment
View SamplesThis cohort included 118 consecutive and unselected patients who underwent, between September 1998 and September 2010, curative intent surgery for PDA (Brussels Dataset). Archived tumor specimens were available for the entire study population. Exclusion criteria included: preoperative chemotherapy or chemoradiotherapy (n=12), macroscopically incomplete resection (R2) (n=6), or tumor histology other than ductal adenocarcinoma (n=19). We also excluded patients who died of postoperative complications within 30 days following surgery (n=1) because they are non-informative for this kind of translational study.
No associated publication
No sample metadata fields
View SamplesPurpose: There is growing evidence that interaction between stromal and tumor cells is pivotal in breast cancer progression and response to therapy. Since the pioneer work of Allinen et al. suggested that during breast cancer progression striking changes occur in CD10+ stromal cells, we aimed to better characterize this cell population and its clinical relevance.
Characterization and clinical evaluation of CD10+ stroma cells in the breast cancer microenvironment.
Specimen part, Disease stage
View SamplesMicroarrays have revolutionized breast cancer (BC) research by enabling studies of gene expression on a transcriptome-wide scale. Recently, RNA-Sequencing (RNA-Seq) has emerged as an alternative for precise readouts of the transcriptome. To date, no study has compared the ability of the two technologies to quantify clinically relevant individual genes and microarray-derived gene expression signatures (GES) in a set of BC samples encompassing the known molecular BC's subtypes. To accomplish this, the RNA from 57 BCs representing the four main molecular subtypes (triple negative, HER2 positive, luminal A, luminal B), was profiled with Affymetrix HG-U133 Plus 2.0 chips and sequenced using the Illumina HiSeq 2000 platform. The correlations of three clinically relevant BC genes, six molecular subtype classifiers, and a selection of 21 GES were evaluated.
Transfer of clinically relevant gene expression signatures in breast cancer: from Affymetrix microarray to Illumina RNA-Sequencing technology.
Specimen part, Disease stage
View SamplesThis SuperSeries is composed of the SubSeries listed below.
Feasibility of developing reliable gene expression modules from FFPE derived RNA profiled on Affymetrix arrays.
Specimen part
View SamplesA significant proportion of breast cancer patients develop multiple synchronous unilateral breast tumors, also referred to as multifocal tumors, which represent a diagnostic and therapeutic challenge. Multifocality has been associated with a possible adverse patient outcome, propensity for axillary nodal involvement, and increased risk of local recurrence following breast conserving surgery when compared to unifocal tumors. Previous studies indicate that most lesions from multifocal tumors are concordant with regard to the currently used pathological parameters (histological subtype and grade, hormonal receptors and HER2 status). However, to our knowledge, no study has yet provided a detailed molecular analysis of multifocal breast cancer. Here, we aimed to better define the incidence of multifocal breast cancer using a systematic analysis of pathology reports of primary breast cancers and to compare different foci from 5 multifocal breast cancers in a global analysis using genomic, transcriptomic and epigenomic data. We demonstrate that multifocality is a frequent finding since it concerns 22% (945/4340) of breast cancer patients with primary ductal breast cancer. We find that different lesions from multifocal breast cancer can differ at the (epi)genomic and transcriptomic level even when the foci present similar histology, grading, hormonal and HER2 status despite having a common genetic background. Since the number of (epi)genetic alterations with potential clinical utility is rapidly growing due to increasing numbers of targeted therapies, these findings suggest that it might be necessary to interrogate the different lesions of multifocal breast cancers for adequate treatment management of these tumors.
No associated publication
Specimen part, Disease stage
View SamplesThe reliability of differential expression analysis on FFPE expression profiles from Affymetrix arrays is questionable, due to the wide range of percent-present values reported in studies which profiled FFPE samples on Affymetrix arrays. Moreover the validity of externally defined gene-modules in FFPE microarray expression profiles is unknown. Using eight breast cancer tumors with available frozen and FFPE samples, five sample-matched data sets were generated from different combination of Affymetrix arrays, amplification-and-labeling kit and sample preservation method. The reliability of differential expression analysis was investigated by developing de novo ER/HER2 pathway gene-modules from matched data sets and validating it on external data set using ROC analysis. Spearman's rank correlation coefficient of module scores between matched FFPE-frozen expression profiles was used to measure reliability of externally defined gene-modules in FFPE expression profiles. Independent of array/amplification-kit/sample preservation method used, de novo ER/HER2 gene-modules derived from all matching data sets showed similar prediction performance during independent validation (AUC range; ER: 0.92-0.95, HER2: 0.88-0.91), except for de novo HER2 gene-module derived from FFPE data set with 3'IVT kit (AUC: 0.67-0.72). Further not all gene-module based biological signals present in frozen expression profiles can be recovered from matching FFPE microarray expression profiles using the currently available FFPE specific sample preparation kits. The gene-module based biological signal extracted from FFPE RNA, using microarrays, may not be as reliable as that from their frozen counterpart, if the sample preparation protocol used with FFPE RNA failed to recover relevant genes involved in the biological signal.
Feasibility of developing reliable gene expression modules from FFPE derived RNA profiled on Affymetrix arrays.
Specimen part
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