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Gene expression profile of peripheral blood mononuclear cells may contribute to the identification and immunological classification of breast cancer patients

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Abstract

Background

It has been reported that the gene expression profile of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) exhibits a unique gene expression signature in several types of cancer. In this study, we aimed to explore the breast cancer patient-specific gene expression profile of PBMCs and discuss immunological insight on host antitumor immune responses.

Methods

We comprehensively analyzed the gene expression of PBMCs by RNA sequencing in the breast cancer patients as compared to that of healthy volunteers (HVs). Pathway enrichment analysis was performed on MetaCoretm to search the molecular pathways associated with the gene expression profile of PBMCs in cancer patients compared with HVs.

Results

We found a significant unique gene expression signature, such as the Toll-like receptor (TLR) 3- and TLR4-induced Toll/interleukin-1 receptor domain-containing adapter molecule 1 (TICAM1)-specific signaling pathway in the breast cancer patients as compared to that of healthy volunteers. Distinctive immunological gene expression profiles also showed the possibility of classifying breast cancer patients into subgroups such as T-cell inhibitory and monocyte-activating groups independent of known phenotypes of breast cancer.

Conclusions

These preliminary findings suggest that evaluation of gene expression patterns of PBMCs might be both a less invasive diagnostic procedure and a useful way to reveal immunological insight of breast cancer, including biomarkers for cancer immunotherapy, such as immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the medical staff of the Department of Breast Surgery of Kyoto University Hospital for their help in the recruitment of patients and collection of samples. This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 17K10546.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Breast Surgery Department, Kyoto University, 54 Kawahara-cho, Shogoin, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, Japan

    Eiji Suzuki, Kosuke Kawaguchi, Fengling Pu, Ayane Yamaguchi, Mariko Nishie, Moe Tsuda, Takeshi Kotake & Masakazu Toi

  2. Health Promotion and Preemptive Medicine, Research and Development Center for Minimally Invasive Therapies, Tokyo Medical University, 6-1-1 Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan

    Masahiro Sugimoto

  3. Department of Biomedical Statistics and Bioinformatics, Kyoto University, 54 Kawahara-cho, Shogoin, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, Japan

    Ryuji Uozumi & Satoshi Morita

Authors
  1. Eiji Suzuki
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  2. Masahiro Sugimoto
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  3. Kosuke Kawaguchi
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  4. Fengling Pu
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  5. Ryuji Uozumi
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  6. Ayane Yamaguchi
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  7. Mariko Nishie
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  8. Moe Tsuda
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  9. Takeshi Kotake
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  10. Satoshi Morita
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  11. Masakazu Toi
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Correspondence to Eiji Suzuki.

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All authors declare no conflicts of interests in the authorship or publication of this article.

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Suzuki, E., Sugimoto, M., Kawaguchi, K. et al. Gene expression profile of peripheral blood mononuclear cells may contribute to the identification and immunological classification of breast cancer patients. Breast Cancer 26, 282–289 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12282-018-0920-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12282-018-0920-2

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