Are triple-negative tumours and basal-like breast cancer synonymous?

Emad A Rakha,David Sp Tan,Ian O Ellis,William D Foulkes,Torsten O Nielsen,Jorge S Reis-Filho,Andrew Tutt

doi:10.1186/bcr1827

Abstract

Are triple-negative tumours and basal-like breast cancer synonymous?

Highlights

Emad A Rakha1, David SP Tan2, William D Foulkes3, Ian O Ellis1, Andrew Tutt4, Torsten O Nielsen5 and Jorge S Reis-Filho2
triple-negative phenotype (TNP) tumours were profiled with oligonucleotide microarrays and compared with a control group of 102 non-TNP tumours, which were obtained from an unrelated project
Given that only 91% of TNP tumours displayed a significant association with the basal-like centroid and that 18.6% of non-TNP tumours clustered together with TNP tumours in the ‘basal-like’ cluster, a more reasonable conclusion is that the majority of, but not all, TNP tumours have a basal-like phenotype and that the majority of, but not all, basal-like tumours have a TNP phenotype

Summary

Introduction

Emad A Rakha1, David SP Tan2, William D Foulkes3, Ian O Ellis1, Andrew Tutt4, Torsten O Nielsen5 and Jorge S Reis-Filho2. Kreike and colleagues [1] examined the gene expression and pathological characteristics of a retrospectively accrued cohort of 97 triple-negative phenotype (TNP) (oestrogen receptor [ER]-negative, progesterone receptor-negative, and HER2-negative) invasive breast cancers.

Results

Conclusion