Breast Carcinomas arising at a Young Age: A Unique Biology or a Surrogate for Aggressive Intrinsic Subtypes.. Homo sapiens

Breast cancer is no longer viewed as a homogenous disease, but rather a compilation of several distinct subtypes as defined by microarray or other large scale genomic analyses. Based on prior reports, we hypothesized that younger women’s breast tumors would be enriched for more aggressive subtypes (i.e. Basal-like) and higher grade, and that age-specific gene expression differences may be highly dependent on subtype classification and/or grade. Using two independent datasets, our current analysis shows that breast tumors arising in women aged = 45 years are enriched for the Basal-like subtype (and higher grade) while those aged = 65 years are enriched for Luminal tumors. Moreover, when evaluating gene expression differences between age-defined groups, sizable gene lists were identified which diminished to few, if any, age-specific genes when statistically correcting for significant clinical factors (i.e. subtype, grade, etc). Keywords: reference x sample Overall design: 344 breast tumor samples hybridized with Stratagene common reference and profiled on Agilent microarrays.