Gene expression profiles of pretreatment biopsies from dose-dense-docetaxel-treated breast cancers

The purpose of this study was to identify molecular markers of pathologic response to neoadjuvant dose-dense docetaxel treatment using gene expression profiling on pretreatment biopsies. Patients with high-risk, operable breast cancer were treated with 75 mg/m2 IV of docetaxel on day 1 of each cycle every 2 weeks x 4 cycles . Tumor tissue from pretreatment biopsies was obtained from 12 patients enrolled in the study. Gene expression profiling were done on serial sections of the biopsies from patients that achieved a pathologic complete response (pCR) and compared to those with residual disease, non-pCR (NR). Tumor tissues from pretreatment needle biopsies from patients enrolled in a dose-dense docetaxel clinical trial were laser capture microdissected for RNA extraction and hybridization to Affymetrix microarrays. We analyzed one array (sample A) from duplicate samples from each patient.