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ESR1 gene amplification in breast cancer: a common phenomenon?

Nature Genetics volume 40, page 809 (2008)Cite this article

A Correspondence to this article was published on 01 July 2008

To the Editor:

In a recent Nature Genetics letter entitled “Estrogen receptor alpha (ESR1) gene amplification is frequent in breast cancer,” Holst et al. report that more than 20% of breast cancers harbor genomic amplification of the ESR1 gene1. The authors also suggest that ESR1 amplification may help to identify a subgroup of estrogen-positive breast cancers likely to have a good response to anti-estrogen therapy. As the authors acknowledge, such an observation constitutes a rather unexpected finding in light of a number and variety of studies that have focused on the structure, expression and function of the estrogen receptor gene in breast cancer cells since its discovery more than 20 years ago.

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Acknowledgements

We thank J. Couturier, A. Aurias and the Breast Cancer Study Group of the Institut Curie for their help. Construction of the BAC array was supported by grants from the Carte d'Identité des Tumeurs (CIT) program of the Ligue Nationale Contre le Cancer.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM) U830, Institut Curie, 26 rue d'Ulm, 75248, Cedex 05, France

    Anne Vincent-Salomon, Virginie Raynal, Carlo Lucchesi, Nadège Gruel & Olivier Delattre

  2. Department of Pathology, Institut Curie, 26 rue d'Ulm, 75248, Cedex 05, France

    Anne Vincent-Salomon

  3. Department of Translational Research, Institut Curie, 26 rue d'Ulm, 75248, Cedex 05, France

    Nadège Gruel

Authors
  1. Anne Vincent-Salomon
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  2. Virginie Raynal
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  3. Carlo Lucchesi
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  4. Nadège Gruel
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  5. Olivier Delattre
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Olivier Delattre.

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Vincent-Salomon, A., Raynal, V., Lucchesi, C. et al. ESR1 gene amplification in breast cancer: a common phenomenon?. Nat Genet 40, 809 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/ng0708-809a

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