Identification of interacting stromal properties in triple-negative breast cancer - Stromal Discovery Set

Triple-negative breast cancer is a molecularly heterogeneous cancer that is difficult to treat. TNBC microenvironmental (stromal) heterogeneity has not been well characterized despite the key role that it may play in tumor progression. To address this challenge we investigated the transcriptome of tumor-associated stroma isolated from TNBCs (n=57). 57 flash-frozen human primary breast cancer samples were subjected to laser capture microdissection to separately isolate tumor-associated and adjacent normal stromal components. RNA was isolated, subjected to 2 rounds of amplification, and hybridized on Agilent 8x60K microarrays along with a common reference two round-amplified commercially obtained Universal Human Reference RNA). For one sample each tumor-associated stroma and normal adjacent stroma, a second technical replicate was performed.