Gene expression signature of estrogen receptor α status in breast cancer -: art. no. 37

Background: Estrogens are known to regulate the proliferation of breast cancer cells and to modify their phenotypic properties. Identification of estrogen-regulated genes in human breast tumors is an essential step toward understanding the molecular mechanisms of estrogen action in cancer. To this end we generated and compared the Serial Analysis of Gene Expression ( SAGE) profiles of 26 human breast carcinomas based on their estrogen receptor alpha ( ER) status. Thus, producing a breast cancer SAGE database of almost 2.5 million tags, representing over 50,000 transcripts. Results: We identified 520 transcripts differentially expressed between ER alpha-positive (+) and ER alpha-negative (-) primary breast tumors (Fold change >= 2; p < 0.05). Furthermore, we identified 220 high-affinity Estrogen Responsive Elements (EREs) distributed on the promoter regions of 163 out of the 473 up-modulated genes in ER alpha (+) breast tumors. In brief, we observed predominantly upregulation of cell growth related genes, DNA binding and transcription factor activity related genes based on Gene Ontology (GO) biological functional annotation. GO terms over-representation analysis showed a statistically significant enrichment of various transcript families including: metal ion binding related transcripts (p = 0.011), calcium ion binding related transcripts (p = 0.033) and steroid hormone receptor activity related transcripts (p = 0.031). SAGE data associated with ER alpha status was compared with reported information from breast cancer DNA microarrays studies. A significant proportion of ER alpha associated gene expression changes was validated by this cross-platform comparison. However, our SAGE study also identified novel sets of genes as highly expressed in ER alpha (+) invasive breast tumors not previously reported. These observations were further validated in an independent set of human breast tumors by means of real time RT-PCR. Conclusion: The integration of the breast cancer comparative transcriptome analysis based on ER alpha status coupled to the genome-wide identification of high-affinity EREs and GO overrepresentation analysis, provide useful information for validation and discovery of signaling networks related to estrogen response in this malignancy.