Oncotarget | Molecular subtypes of triple-negative breast cancer in women of different race and ethnicity

Oncotarget Volume 10, Issue 2 reports that Hispanics had a significantly higher proportion of basal-like immunosuppressed (BLIS), whereas Asians had a lower proportion of BLIS and a higher proportion of luminal androgen receptor (LAR) compared to the average proportion across all groups.

Determining subtypes of Triple Negative Breast Cance (TNBC) facilitates understanding of the heterogeneity of the TNBCs and provides a foundation for developing subtype-specific therapies and better predictors of TNBC prognosis for all races and ethnicities.

Dr. Susan L. Neuhausen from the Department of Population Sciences, Beckman Research Institute of City of Hope, Duarte, CA, USA said "Women who present with triple negative breast cancer have worse prognoses than those with other breast cancer subtypes."

"Women who present with triple negative breast cancer have worse prognoses than those with other breast cancer subtypes"

- Dr. Susan L. Neuhausen, Department of Population Sciences, Beckman Research Institute of City of Hope

Defined as breast cancer that lacks expression of estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor, and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2, TNBC is an aggressive histological subtype of breast cancer where women present with high grade, advanced disease.

In a 2010 study of 57,483 breast cancer patients from 17 population-based registries participating in the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results program, African-American women were twice as likely and Hispanic women were 30% more likely to be diagnosed with TNBC than non-Hispanic Caucasians.

The higher incidence of TNBC in women of African ancestry may explain the worse prognosis and higher mortality from breast cancer among African-American compared to White women.

Even within the Cancer Genome Atlas breast cancer set of more than 1000 women, there are few samples from non-White women with TNBC.

Figure 4: Kaplan–Meier analyses of overall survival and recurrence-free survival and tumor subtype for 113 TNBC patients stratified by tumor stages 1 and 2 and tumor stage 3 (A–D, respectively).

In multivariate analysis accounting for age and stage at diagnosis and race/ethnicity, our results show that TNBC subtype BLIS is associated with worse survival and LAR with the best survival.

The Asian women in the study had significantly lower numbers of BLIS and higher numbers of LAR, and they showed the best overall survival which is consistent with what has been previously reported for survival."

Neuhausen is City of Hope's Morris & Horowitz Families Professor in Cancer Etiology & Outcomes Research; Director of the Division of Biomarkers of Early Detection and Prevention, Department of Population Sciences and Co-leader, Cancer Control and Population Sciences Program, Comprehensive Cancer Center.

The Neuhausen research team concluded, in their Oncotarget Research Paper "This study is one of the first to conduct molecular subtyping of TNBC comparing Whites, Hispanics, Asians, and African Americans; it fills a gap of knowledge in how molecular subtypes of TNBC may be used to improve tumor-biology-driven prognosis of TNBC in these underserved and understudied populations.

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DOI - https://doi.org/10.18632/oncotarget.26559

Full text - https://www.oncotarget.com/article/26559/text/

Correspondence to - Susan L. Neuhausen - sneuhausen@coh.org

Keywords - triple-negative breast cancer, molecular subtypes, hispanics, asians, african-Americans

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