The Impact of the Coexpression of and Genes on Prognosticators and Clinical Outcomes of Breast Cancer: An Analysis for the METABRIC Dataset.

PURPOSE

Breast cancer is a heterogeneous disease. Exploring new prognostic and therapeutic targets in patients with breast cancer is essential. This study investigated the expression of MET, ESR1, and ESR2 genes and their association with clinicopathologic characteristics and clinical outcomes in patients with breast cancer.

METHODS

The METABRIC dataset for breast cancer was obtained from the cBioPortal public domain. Gene expression data for , , and , as well as the putative copy number alterations (CNAs) for were retrieved.

RESULTS

The mRNA expression levels correlated inversely with the expression levels of and positively with the expression levels of ( = -0.379, < 0.001 and  = 0.066, and =0.004, respectively). The mRNA expression was significantly different among CNAs groups ( < 0.001). Patients with high / coexpression had favorable clinicopathologic tumor characteristics and prognosticators compared to low coexpression in terms of greater age at diagnosis, reduced Nottingham Prognostic Index, lower tumor grade, hormone receptor positivity, HER2-negative status, and luminal subtype ( < 0.001). In contrast, patients with high / coexpression had unfavorable tumor features and advanced prognosticators compared to patients with low / coexpression ( < 0.001). No significant difference in overall survival was observed based on the coexpression status. However, when data were stratified based on the treatment type (chemotherapy and hormonal therapy), survival was significantly different based on the coexpression status of .

CONCLUSIONS

Findings from our study add to the growing evidence on the potential crosstalk between MET and estrogen receptors in breast cancer. The expression of the MET/ESR genes could be a novel prognosticator and calls for future studies to evaluate the impact of combinational treatment approaches with MET inhibitors and endocrine drugs in breast cancer.