Aurora US Metastatic Breast Cancer Retrospective Project

AURORA US Metastatic Breast Cancer project is funded by the Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF) Evelyn H. Lauder Founder's Fund for Metastatic Breast Cancer Research. This multi-center effort conducted within the Translational Breast Cancer Research Consortium (TBCRC) and cancer researchers to better understand the metastatic process through the study of both the primary and metastatic tissue. In the retrospective phase, TBCRC sites submitted matched primary and metastatic tissues and blood from previous collections for piloting the process. Samples were profiled using whole genome DNA sequencing, whole exome DNA sequencing, DNA methylation arrays, and RNA sequencing. The final freeze set for samples with successful nucleic acid extraction and molecular assays included 55 patients with 31 primary tissues and 102 metastases. Twenty patients had tissue collected at autopsy and included 19 with more than one metastasis. Metastases were from 20 different tissue locations with the most common sites being liver, lung, lymph node, and brain. The median age at primary diagnosis was 49 years. The clinical subtypes of the primary tumors were 34% Triple Negative, 30% ER+HER2-, 11% ER+HER2+, and 7% ER-HER2+. Patients received an average of 3 lines of therapy in the metastatic setting. The median overall survival from primary diagnosis was 4.5 years and overall survival from metastatic diagnosis was 2 years. ]]>
Eligibility criteria for the retrospective study included the availability of a fresh frozen metastatic specimen, paired primary tumor specimen (fresh frozen or FFPE), a source of normal DNA (blood or tissue). Pathology requirements included tissue samples with greater than 30% tumor nuclei and normal samples with 0% tumor nuclei. Samples with a minimum of 250 ng of tumor and normal DNA and 500ng of RNA passed nucleic acid thresholds. Study cases had to have a minimum of one qualified tumor and one qualified normal. ]]>