Gene Expression Profiles of Primary Breast Tumors Maintained in Distant Metastases

It has been debated for decades how cancer cells acquire metastatic capability. It is unclear whether metastases are derived from distinct subpopulations of tumor cells within the primary site with higher metastatic potential, or whether they originate from a random fraction of tumor cells. Here we...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS 2003-12, Vol.100 (26), p.15901-15905
Main Authors: Weigelt, Britta, Glas, Annuska M., Lodewyk F. A. Wessels, Witteveen, Anke T., Peterse, Johannes L., Laura J. van't Veer
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biological Sciences
Breast cancer
Breast neoplasms
Breast Neoplasms - genetics
Breast Neoplasms - pathology
Cancer
Complementary DNA
Female
Gene expression
Gene Expression Profiling
Genetics
Human genetics
Humans
Lung Neoplasms - genetics
Lung Neoplasms - pathology
Lung Neoplasms - secondary
Lymphatic Metastasis
Medical research
Metastasis
Neoplasm Metastasis - genetics
Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis
Ovarian Neoplasms - genetics
Ovarian Neoplasms - pathology
Ovarian Neoplasms - secondary
RNA
RNA, Neoplasm - genetics
RNA, Neoplasm - isolation & purification
Tumor cell line
Tumors
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Summary:It has been debated for decades how cancer cells acquire metastatic capability. It is unclear whether metastases are derived from distinct subpopulations of tumor cells within the primary site with higher metastatic potential, or whether they originate from a random fraction of tumor cells. Here we show, by gene expression profiling, that human primary breast tumors are strikingly similar to the distant metastases of the same patient. Unsupervised hierarchical clustering, multidimensional scaling, and permutation testing, as well as the comparison of significantly expressed genes within a pair, reveal their genetic similarity. Our findings suggest that metastatic capability in breast cancer is an inherent feature and is not based on clonal selection.
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.2634067100