Proliferation and estrogen signaling can distinguish patients at risk for early versus late relapse among estrogen receptor positive breast cancers

  • Introduction: We examined if a combination of proliferation markers and estrogen receptor (ER) activity could predict early versus late relapses in ER-positive breast cancer and inform the choice and length of adjuvant endocrine therapy. Methods: Baseline affymetrix gene-expression profiles from ER-positive patients who received no systemic therapy (n = 559), adjuvant tamoxifen for 5 years (cohort-1: n = 683, cohort-2: n = 282) and from 58 patients treated with neoadjuvant letrozole for 3 months (gene-expression available at baseline, 14 and 90 days) were analyzed. A proliferation score based on the expression of mitotic kinases (MKS) and an ER-related score (ERS) adopted from Oncotype DX® were calculated. The same analysis was performed using the Genomic Grade Index as proliferation marker and the luminal gene score from the PAM50 classifier as measure of estrogen-related genes. Median values were used to define low and high marker groups and four combinations were created. Relapses were grouped into time cohorts of 0-2.5, 0-5, 5-10 years. Results: In the overall 10 years period, the proportional hazards assumption was violated for several biomarker groups indicating time-dependent effects. In tamoxifen-treated patients Low-MKS/Low-ERS cancers had continuously increasing risk of relapse that was higher after 5 years than Low-MKS/High-ERS cancers [0 to 10 year, HR 3.36; p = 0.013]. High-MKS/High-ERS cancers had low risk of early relapse [0-2.5 years HR 0.13; p = 0.0006], but high risk of late relapse which was higher than in the High-MKS/Low-ERS group [after 5 years HR 3.86; p = 0.007]. The High-MKS/Low-ERS subset had most of the early relapses [0 to 2.5 years, HR 6.53; p < 0.0001] especially in node negative tumors and showed minimal response to neoadjuvant letrozole. These findings were qualitatively confirmed in a smaller independent cohort of tamoxifen-treated patients. Using different biomarkers provided similar results. Conclusions: Early relapses are highest in highly proliferative/low-ERS cancers, in particular in node negative tumors. Relapses occurring after 5 years of adjuvant tamoxifen are highest among the highly-proliferative/high-ERS tumors although their risk of recurrence is modest in the first 5 years on tamoxifen. These tumors could be the best candidates for extended endocrine therapy.

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Author:Giampaolo Bianchini, Lajos Pusztai, Thomas Karn, Takayuki Iwamoto, Achim Rody, Catherine M. Kelly, Volkmar MüllerORCiDGND, Marcus Schmidt, Yuan Qi, Uwe Holtrich, Sven BeckerORCiDGND, Libero Santarpia, Angelica Fasolo, Gianluca Del Conte, Milvia Zambetti, Christos Sotiriou, Benjamin Haibe-Kains, W. Fraser Symmans, Luca Gianni
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-324128
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1186/bcr3481
ISSN:1465-542X
ISSN:1465-5411
Pubmed Id:https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24060333
Parent Title (English):Breast cancer research
Publisher:BioMed Central
Place of publication:London
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Date of Publication (online):2013/09/23
Date of first Publication:2013/09/23
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2013/12/02
Volume:15
Issue:R86
Page Number:13
Note:
© 2013 Bianchini et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
HeBIS-PPN:363335234
Institutes:Medizin / Medizin
Dewey Decimal Classification:6 Technik, Medizin, angewandte Wissenschaften / 61 Medizin und Gesundheit / 610 Medizin und Gesundheit
Sammlungen:Universitätspublikationen
Licence (German):License LogoCreative Commons - Namensnennung 2.0