RET overexpression leads to increased brain metastatic competency in luminal breast cancer

In the present study we aimed to explore the role of tyrosine kinase receptor, RET, in promoting breast cancer brain metastasis. Using patient-derived brain metastatic models, we found RET significantly enriched in brain metastasis originating from estrogen receptor positive breast cancer where it played a key role in promoting cancer cell adhesion, survival, and outgrowth in the brain. To model the RET overexpression observed in patients and ex vivo models of BCBM, ER+ve brain metastatic breast cancer cells (T347) were transduced with Luc-GFP as a control (Ctrl) or the Luc-GFP-RET overexpression vector, generating a stable RET overexpression T347 cell line (RET+). We performed a comparative gene expression profiling analysis of RNA-seq data for T347-Ctrl and T347-RET+ cell lines.