1 Department of Biology, Concordia University, Montreal, QC, Canada.
2 School of Computer Science, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada.
3 Department of Computer Science, UiT the Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway.
4 Department of Surgery, St. Olavs University Hospital, Trondheim, Norway.
5 Faculty of Medicine, The Norwegian University of Technology and Science, Trondheim, Norway.
6 University Hospital of North-Norway, Narvik, Norway.
7 Department of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Norway.
8 Nordland Central Hospital, Bodø, Norway.
9 Department of Cancer, Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Norway.
10 Department of Cancer Genetics, Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Norway.
11 Institute of Community Medicine, UiT the Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway.

Interactions between the tumor and the blood systemic response of breast cancer patients.

PLoS Comput Biol. 2017 Sep;13(9):e1005680

Authors: Dumeaux V, Fjukstad B, Fjosne HE, Frantzen JO, Holmen MM, Rodegerdts E, Schlichting E, Børresen-Dale AL, Bongo LA, Lund E, Hallett M

Abstract

Although systemic immunity is critical to the process of tumor rejection, cancer research has largely focused on immune cells in the tumor microenvironment. To understand molecular changes in the patient systemic response (SR) to the presence of BC, we profiled RNA in blood and matched tumor from 173 patients. We designed a system (MIxT, Matched Interactions Across Tissues) to systematically explore and link molecular processes expressed in each tissue. MIxT confirmed that processes active in the patient SR are especially relevant to BC immunogenicity. The nature of interactions across tissues (i.e. which biological processes are associated and their patterns of expression) varies highly with tumor subtype. For example, aspects of the immune SR are underexpressed proportionally to the level of expression of defined molecular processes specific to basal tumors. The catalog of subtype-specific interactions across tissues from BC patients provides promising new ways to tackle or monitor the disease by exploiting the patient SR.

PMID: 28957325 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]