Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2005 Jul 7;24(29):4660-71.
doi: 10.1038/sj.onc.1208561.

Identification of molecular apocrine breast tumours by microarray analysis

Pierre Farmer  1 , Herve Bonnefoi, Veronique Becette, Michele Tubiana-Hulin, Pierre Fumoleau, Denis Larsimont, Gaetan Macgrogan, Jonas Bergh, David Cameron, Darlene Goldstein, Stephan Duss, Anne-Laure Nicoulaz, Cathrin Brisken, Maryse Fiche, Mauro Delorenzi, Richard Iggo
Affiliations
Free article

Identification of molecular apocrine breast tumours by microarray analysis

Pierre Farmer et al. Oncogene. .
Free article

Abstract

Previous microarray studies on breast cancer identified multiple tumour classes, of which the most prominent, named luminal and basal, differ in expression of the oestrogen receptor alpha gene (ER). We report here the identification of a group of breast tumours with increased androgen signalling and a 'molecular apocrine' gene expression profile. Tumour samples from 49 patients with large operable or locally advanced breast cancers were tested on Affymetrix U133A gene expression microarrays. Principal components analysis and hierarchical clustering split the tumours into three groups: basal, luminal and a group we call molecular apocrine. All of the molecular apocrine tumours have strong apocrine features on histological examination (P=0.0002). The molecular apocrine group is androgen receptor (AR) positive and contains all of the ER-negative tumours outside the basal group. Kolmogorov-Smirnov testing indicates that oestrogen signalling is most active in the luminal group, and androgen signalling is most active in the molecular apocrine group. ERBB2 amplification is commoner in the molecular apocrine than the other groups. Genes that best split the three groups were identified by Wilcoxon test. Correlation of the average expression profile of these genes in our data with the expression profile of individual tumours in four published breast cancer studies suggest that molecular apocrine tumours represent 8-14% of tumours in these studies. Our data show that it is possible with microarray data to divide mammary tumour cells into three groups based on steroid receptor activity: luminal (ER+ AR+), basal (ER- AR-) and molecular apocrine (ER- AR+).

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

Publication types