The origins of breast cancer prognostic gene expression profiles

Recent high profile clinical trials show that microarray-based gene expression profiling has the potential to become an important tool for predicting prognosis in breast cancer. Earlier work in our laboratory using mouse models and human breast cancer populations has enabled us to show that metastasis susceptibility is an inherited trait. This same combined approach facilitated the identification of a number of candidate genes that, when dysregulated, have the potential to induce prognostic gene expression profiles in human data sets. To investigate if these gene expression signatures were of somatic or germline origin and to assess the contribution of different cell types to the induction of these signatures, we have performed a series of expression profiling experiments in a mouse model of metastatic breast cancer. These results show that both the tumor epithelium and invading stromal tissues contribute to the development of prognostic gene signatures. Furthermore, analysis of normal tissues and tumor transplants suggests that prognostic signatures result from both somatic and inherited components, with the inherited components being more consistently predictive.