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Breast cancer

Divide and conquer?

Nature Reviews Cancer volume 12, page 375 (2012)Cite this article

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Carlos Caldas, Samuel Aparicio and colleagues examined a discovery set of 997 clinically annotated breast tumours (from the Molecular Taxonomy of Breast Cancer International Consortium (METABRIC)) for inherited copy number variations (CNVs), somatic copy number alterations (CNAs), inherited single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and changes in gene expression. The CNAs, CNVs and SNPs affected approximately 40% of the genes expressed in the tumours, with the majority being CNAs acting in cis (at the affected locus) or in trans (affecting distal loci). By analysing gene expression outliers affected in cis by CNAs, the authors identified known and potentially new breast cancer oncogenes and tumour suppressor genes, including PPP2R1A (a gene involved in mitosis), MTAP (a gene involved in the salvage of methyladenosine) and MAP2K4 (a p38 and JUN dual specificity serine/threonine protein kinase). Analyses of the CNAs acting in trans indicated that deletions in T cell receptor (TCR) genes, TRG and TRA, resulted in alterations to a number of mRNAs that encode proteins of the adaptive immune response.

oestrogen receptor (ER)-positive luminal tumours with a cis acting 11q13–14 alteration ... have a particularly poor prognosis

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPERS

  1. Shah, S. P. et al. The clonal and mutational evolution spectrum of primary triple-negative breast cancers. Nature 4 Apr 2012 (doi:10.1038/nature10933)

  2. Curtis, C. et al. The genomic and transcriptomic achitecture of 2,000 breast tumours reveals novel subgroups. Nature 18 Apr 2012 (doi:10.1038/nature10983)

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Authors
  1. Nicola McCarthy
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McCarthy, N. Divide and conquer?. Nat Rev Cancer 12, 375 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrc3279

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