Neoadjuvant Trastuzumab Response in Breast Cancer. Homo sapiens

The HER2+ subgroup of breast cancer historically represented one of the worst prognostic groups in breast cancer diagnoses. Although remarkable improvements in outcomes have been realized in the last 10 years with the advent of targeted therapy, in particular trastuzumab, about 50% of women have residual disease despite a full course of chemotherapy treatment and these patients are at much higher risk of subsequent relapse than patients with a pathologically complete response. In neoadjuvant studies, where the therapeutic course precedes surgery, we therefore have a unique opportunity for unbiased study of treatment-naive genomes of tumor cells in a setting where resistance or sensitivity to treatment has been documented. Our goals in this study are to characterize the somatic variation genome-wide by whole genome sequencing compared to matched normal bloods and to integrate these data with transcriptome profiles.