The molecular classification of human breast tumors has afforded insights into subtype specific biological processes, patient prognosis and response to therapies. However, using current methods roughly one quarter of breast tumors cannot be classified into one or another molecular subtype. To explore the possibility that the unclassifiable samples might comprise one or more novel subtypes we em...

Receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs) drive breast cancer progression, particularly in human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 and basal tumors, the two worst prognosis subtypes. Tumor cells recruit host stromal components, including immune cells, which strongly influence disease progression. This has been studied in human breast cancer and translated to murine models of breast cancer. Stromal immu...

BACKGROUND Breast cancer is a heterogeneous disease with various histological features and molecular markers. These are utilized for the prediction of clinical outcome and therapeutic decision making. In addition to well established markers such as HER2 overexpression and estrogen and progesterone receptor (ER and PR) status, chromosomal instability is evolving as an important hallmark of cance...

Historically, breast cancer classification has relied on prognostic subtypes. Thus, unlike hematopoietic cancers, breast tumor classification lacks phylogenetic rationale. The feasibility of phylogenetic classification of breast tumors has recently been demonstrated based on estrogen receptor (ER), androgen receptor (AR), vitamin D receptor (VDR) and Keratin 5 expression. Four hormonal states (...

The partner and localizer of BRCA2 (PALB2) gene was recently identified as a BRCA2-interacting protein and subsequently shown to be a Fanconi anemia gene (FANCN). Disease-associated point mutations resulting in protein truncation have been found in BRCA1/2 mutation-negative breast cancer families identifying PALB2 as a susceptibility gene for breast cancer. Aberrant promoter hypermethylation is...

Forty-nine pairs of bilateral breast tumors (41 synchronous and 8 asynchronous cases) were examined for X-chromosome inactivation status andp53 mutations to address the issue of their clonality. Among 12 cases that were informafive for the trinucleotide repeat polymorphism in exon 1 of the androgen receptor gene on the X chromosome, 3 cases were found to have different alleles of the locus inac...

Background: There is little literature comparing intraoperative ultrasound (IOUS) with radio-guided occult lesions localization (ROLL) in nonpalpable invasive tumors breast conserving surgery (BCS). a need to compare these two methods terms of safety and efficacy.

The molecular scenario of breast cancer has become more complex in the last few years. Distinguishing between BRCA-associated, sporadic, HER2-enriched and triple-negative tumors is not sufficient to allow effective clinical management. Basal-like breast cancer, a subtype of triple-negative breast cancer, differs from others grouped under this heading. Commonalities between BRCA-related tumors a...

BACKGROUND Women diagnosed with breast cancer have a twofold to sixfold greater risk of developing contralateral breast cancer than women in the general population have of developing a first breast cancer. Tamoxifen therapy reduces this risk, but it is unclear if this benefit exists for both estrogen receptor (ER)-positive and ER-negative contralateral tumors. METHODS Using data from a popula...

Currently, most of the prognostic and predictive gene expression signatures emerging for breast cancer concern the tumor component. In Dedeurwaerder et al. we show that DNA methylation profiling of breast tumors is a particularly sensitive means of capturing features of the immune component of breast tumors. Most importantly, correlation is observed between T-cell marker genes and breast cancer...