E-cadherin is inactivated in a majority of invasive human lobular breast cancers by truncation mutations throughout its extracellular domain.

We have analysed a series of 49 human breast cancers for mutations in the entire coding region plus flanking intron sequences of the E-cadherin gene. The tumours included 41 infiltrating lobular carcinomas, two infiltrating ducto-lobular carcinomas and six infiltrative ductal carcinomas. In the lobular carcinomas 23 different somatic mutations were detected, of which seven were insertions, 11 deletions, two nonsense mutations and three splice site mutations. The other tumours showed no detectable E-cadherin mutations. All the frameshift and nonsense mutations are expected to generate a secreted E-cadherin fragment instead of a transmembrane protein with cell adhesion activity. The majority of the mutations (21 of 23) were found in combination with loss of heterozygosity of the wild type E-cadherin locus (16q22.1), a hallmark of classical tumour suppressor genes. The mutations were scattered over the whole coding region and no hot spots could be identified. All mutations described here were previously unreported. In conclusion, we have identified up to now E-cadherin mutations in 27 of 48 (56%) infiltrating lobular breast carcinomas and in 0 of 50 breast cancers of other histopathological subtypes. These data provide strong evidence that frequent E-cadherin mutations are involved in the particular etiology of sporadic lobular breast cancers.