Mapping Individual Chemoresistome in Breast Cancer Patients Unravels Diversity in Dynamic Transcriptional Adaptation

Tumors are continuously evolving through their course of progression and treatment, a major process contributing to resistance to therapy. Recent studies brought into focus the importance of non-genetic adaptive mechanisms, by which tumors acquire resistance via rewiring transcriptional programs. To dissect these adaptive processes in the individual breast cancer patients, we combined longitudinal transcriptomics with temporal pattern analysis. Overall design: Matched triplets of archived tumor biopsies from pre-treatment, post-treatment and adjacent normal epithelium were collected from breast cancer patients that underwent neo-adjuvant chemotherapy. Overall, a total of 97 samples from 29 patients were included in this study.