The genomic landscape of breast cancer as a therapeutic roadmap

Abstract

The application of high-throughput techniques to profile DNA, RNA, and protein in breast cancer samples from hundreds of patients has profoundly increased our knowledge of the disease. The etiologic events that drive breast cancer are finally coming into focus and should be used to set priorities for clinical trials. In this Prospective, we summarize some of the headline conclusions from 6 recent breast cancer "omics profiling" articles in Nature, with an emphasis on the implications for systemic therapy.

Figure 1

A simplified therapeutic road map based on somatic mutations in luminal-type breast cancer. This cartoon is based on the analysis by Ellis et al of luminal type breast cancers[4]. All components outlined in the cartoon were chosen based on evidence for either gene functional gain indicated in green, (e.g. amplification or gain of function mutation) or gene functional loss indicated in blue (e.g. LOH, frameshift or nonsense mutation). Matched therapeutic approaches for the gain of function events are discussed in Table 2.