Novel Implication of the Basement Membrane for Breast Cancer Outcome and Immune Infiltration

Therapeutic failure in breast cancer patients is largely attributed to postoperative advancement and therapy resistance. Nevertheless, an efficacious prognostic signature for recognizing this population is lacking. The basement membrane (BM) has been proven to be strongly involved in cancer progression and metastasis, and has the potential to be a powerful predictor in breast cancer. In this study, substantial bulk RNA transcriptomics, single cell RNA transcriptomics and clinical information were collected from TCGA-BRCA, METABRIC and GSE96058, and Kaplan-Meier survival curves, single cell analysis and in vitro experiments were conducted to validate the signature. From the results, a prognostic index, namely, the BMscore, was established with six pivotal BM genes, specifically LOXL1, FBLN1, FBLN5, SDC1, ADAMTS8 and PXDNL. Verification by independent cohorts showed that breast cancer patients with high BMscore had a distinctly worse outcome. By integrating the BMscore and clinical factors, we constructed a prognostic nomogram that displayed good predictive capability. Furthermore, we evaluated the implication of the BMscore in breast cancer immune infiltration. More importantly, a strongly positive correlation between the BMscore and EMT activity was revealed with immunohistochemistry and in vitro experiments. Taken together, we provided a novel BMscore gene signature for breast cancer patients to predict clinical prognosis and metastasis accurately, which may help with individualized clinical decision-making.