Gene expression profiles in premenopausal women with HR+ HER2- early breast cancer

Early breast cancer (EBC) is not a single disease but consists of several clinically relevant molecular subtypes. Gene profiles correlated with important tumor pathways such as metastasis, immune response and proliferation also correlate with clinical outcome and therapy response. Premenopausal patients often have poorer prognosis compared to postmenopausal patients and the molecular properties demand special attention. The purpose of our project is to determine gene expression profiles of tumor samples from premenopausal patients with HR+, HER2- EBC. The gene expression profiles will then be correlated to response to therapy response and patient outcome. We comprised a collective of 162 premenopausal EBC patients (77 with and 85 without relapse) treated at the LMU breast center over a ten-year follow-up period. Diagnostic, therapeutic, and recent follow-up data were documented and prepared for statistical analysis. Tissue specimens were prepared for laboratory analysis which include a gene expression profiling using a custom-made pan-cancer code set (n = 745 genes) and the Nanostring nCounter^® analysis. Gene expression data will be compared with conventional immunohistochemistry subtyping as well as histopathological factors that can be used as surrogates for certain pathways (pan cancer pathways, pathways for tumor progression and tumor immunology, etc.).Median patient age was 43.98 years of age (range 29-50). The two patient groups (with/without relapse within 10 years) differed with regard to clinical parameters: grade [2.06±0.07/2.29±0.06, p = 0.024], tumor diameter [26.62 mm±2.11/21.89 mm±2.67, p = 0.033], percentage of lymphnode metastasis [0.18 (range 0-1)/0.078 (range 0-0.92), p = 0.001](Table I).The project is ongoing. Updated results will be presented at the conference.

Publication History

Article published online:
07 October 2020