ArticleBMC cancer2019
Pathway activity profiling of growth factor receptor network and stemness pathways differentiates metaplastic breast cancer histological subtypes.
Article in BMC cancer, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 28 citations in OpenAlex.
- Molecular Characterization and Prospective Evaluation of Pathologic Response and Outcomes with Neoadjuvant Therapy in Metaplastic Triple-Negative Breast Cancer.Clinical cancer research : an official journal of the American Association for Cancer Research · 2022Trial
- Article
- Starfysh integrates spatial transcriptomic and histologic data to reveal heterogeneous tumor-immune hubs.Nature biotechnology · 2025Article
- Highly effective batch effect correction method for RNA-seq count data.Computational and structural biotechnology journal · 2025Article
- Breast Cancer Histopathology in the Age of Molecular Oncology.Cold Spring Harbor perspectives in medicine · 2024Review
- Chemotherapy is of prognostic significance to metaplastic breast cancer.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- pyComBat, a Python tool for batch effects correction in high-throughput molecular data using empirical Bayes methods.BMC bioinformatics · 2023Article
- SPARC in cancer-associated fibroblasts is an independent poor prognostic factor in non-metastatic triple-negative breast cancer and exhibits pro-tumor activity.International journal of cancer · 2023Article
- Identification of a minimum number of genes to predict triple-negative breast cancer subgroups from gene expression profiles.Human genomics · 2022Article
- Epithelial Mesenchymal Transition and Immune Response in Metaplastic Breast Carcinoma.International journal of molecular sciences · 2021Review
- A 9-kDa matricellular SPARC fragment released by cathepsin D exhibits pro-tumor activity in the triple-negative breast cancer microenvironment.Theranostics · 2021Article
- A comprehensive overview of metaplastic breast cancer: clinical features and molecular aberrations.Breast cancer research : BCR · 2020Review
- Article
- Molecular Features of Metaplastic Breast Carcinoma: An Infrequent Subtype of Triple Negative Breast Carcinoma.Cancers · 2020Review
- Impact of histotypes on preferential organ-specific metastasis in triple-negative breast cancer.Cancer medicine · 2020Article
- Mutation Enrichment and Transcriptomic Activation Signatures of 419 Molecular Pathways in Cancer.Cancers · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundGene expression profiling of rare cancers has proven challenging due to limited access to patient materials and requirement of intact, non-degraded RNA for next-generation sequencing. We customized a gene expression panel compatible with degraded RNA from formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) patient cancer samples and investigated its utility in pathway activity profiling in patients with metaplastic breast cancer (MpBC).
methodsActivity of various biological pathways was profiled in samples from nineteen patients with MpBC and 8 patients with invasive ductal carcinoma with triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) phenotype using a custom gene expression-based assay of 345 genes.
resultsMpBC samples of mesenchymal (chondroid and/or osteoid) histology demonstrated increased SNAI1 and BCL2L11 pathway activity compared to samples with non-mesenchymal histology. Additionally, late cornified envelope and keratinization genes were downregulated in MpBC compared to TNBC, and epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and collagen genes were upregulated in MpBC. Patients with high activity of an invasiveness gene expression signature, as well as high expression of the mesenchymal marker and extracellular matrix glycoprotein gene SPARC, experienced worse outcomes than those with low invasiveness activity and low SPARC expression.
conclusionsThis study demonstrates the utility of gene expression profiling of metaplastic breast cancer FFPE samples with a custom counts-based assay. Gene expression patterns identified by this assay suggest that, although often histologically triple negative, patients with MpBC have distinct pathway activation compared to patients with invasive ductal TNBC. Incorporation of targeted therapies may lead to improved outcome for MpBC patients, especially in those patients expressing increased activity of invasiveness pathways.
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