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. 2013 May 16;497(7449):378-82.
doi: 10.1038/nature12108. Epub 2013 May 5.

The shaping and functional consequences of the microRNA landscape in breast cancer

Heidi Dvinge  1 , Anna Git, Stefan Gräf, Mali Salmon-Divon, Christina Curtis, Andrea Sottoriva, Yongjun Zhao, Martin Hirst, Javier Armisen, Eric A Miska, Suet-Feung Chin, Elena Provenzano, Gulisa Turashvili, Andrew Green, Ian Ellis, Sam Aparicio, Carlos Caldas
Affiliations

The shaping and functional consequences of the microRNA landscape in breast cancer

Heidi Dvinge et al. Nature. .

Abstract

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) show differential expression across breast cancer subtypes, and have both oncogenic and tumour-suppressive roles. Here we report the miRNA expression profiles of 1,302 breast tumours with matching detailed clinical annotation, long-term follow-up and genomic and messenger RNA expression data. This provides a comprehensive overview of the quantity, distribution and variation of the miRNA population and provides information on the extent to which genomic, transcriptional and post-transcriptional events contribute to miRNA expression architecture, suggesting an important role for post-transcriptional regulation. The key clinical parameters and cellular pathways related to the miRNA landscape are characterized, revealing context-dependent interactions, for example with regards to cell adhesion and Wnt signalling. Notably, only prognostic miRNA signatures derived from breast tumours devoid of somatic copy-number aberrations (CNA-devoid) are consistently prognostic across several other subtypes and can be validated in external cohorts. We then use a data-driven approach to seek the effects of miRNAs associated with differential co-expression of mRNAs, and find that miRNAs act as modulators of mRNA-mRNA interactions rather than as on-off molecular switches. We demonstrate such an important modulatory role for miRNAs in the biology of CNA-devoid breast cancers, a common subtype in which the immune response is prominent. These findings represent a new framework for studying the biology of miRNAs in human breast cancer.

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