RNA profiling of matched pair samples of primary breast cancer vs. lung and pleura metastasis

Patient samples were recruited from a series of female patients with metastatic primary breast cancer (PBC) and biopsy-confirmed breast cancer lung or pleural metastasis (BCLPM) at the Department of Thoracic Surgery, Thoraxklinik, Univ. of Heidelberg, Germany. All patients were included who had received lung or pleural metastasis biopsies from 2003 to 2014 and had a prior history of PBC at the Department of Gynaecology and Obstetrics, Univ. Hospital. Formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded tissue samples were provided by the Tissue Bank at the National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT, Heidelberg, Germany) in accordance with the regulations of the Tissue Bank and approval of the Ethics Committee at the Medical Faculty of the Univ. of Heidelberg, approval no. S-716/2018. Retrospective cohort study