Abstract PD14-05: Portraying tumor evolution of lobular breast cancer through phylogenetic analysis
Authors: Fimereli Danai , Venet David , Rediti Mattia , Brown David N , Boeckx Bram , Maetens Marion , Majjaj Samira , Rouas Ghizlane , Capra Maria , Bonizzi Giuseppina , Contaldo Federica , Galant Christine , Piccart Martine , Pruneri Giancarlo , Larsimont Denis , Lambrechts Diether , Desmedt Christine , Rothé Françoise , Sotiriou Christos 
Published: March 2022

Background: Despite therapeutic advancements, a substantial number of patients with treated early-stage invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC) of the breast will still relapse as late as 20 years after the initial tumor diagnosis, thus making follow-up a challenging task. Here, using patient-matched primary and metastatic tumors from patients with ILC, we aimed to decipher the evolution of lobular breast cancer through time and explore metastatic dissemination events and underlying heterogeneity. Materials and Methods: We retrospectively identified 38 patients with metastatic ILC, of which 6 with de novo metastatic disease. In total, 99 formalin-fixed paraffin embedded tissue samples of primary tumor and metastasis, together with well-annotated clinicopathological data, were available. Low coverage whole-genome sequencing was performed to infer somatic copy number aberrations (CNA). Phylogenetic reconstruction was performed with Integer Linear Program for the Copy-Number Tree Problem algorithm. Results: Reconstruction of the phylogenetic trees showed different patterns of dissemination. For patients with multiple metastatic samples sequenced (4/4 patients), the metastases were found to be seeded from a common metastatic precursor. For a subset of patients with multiple primaries (5/10 patients), distant metastases were seeded from specific clones inside the primary tumor. Detailed analysis of known driver genes showed that alterations in common driver genes such as TP53, MYC and CCND1 were shared between primary tumor and metastases in a large proportion of the patients (47%, 32% and 21% of patients respectively) whilst CNA in other driver genes including FGFR2, PTEN or AKT2 among others, were frequently private in the metastases. Interestingly, we observed that in approximately 30% of the patients, the metastases harbored less CNA than the matched primary tumor, resulting in shorter metastatic branches and possibly indicating a decelerated tumor progression. Further analysis of the genomic and clinicopathological characteristics showed that these patients were mostly de novo metastatic (p-value=0.002), metastasizing primarily to the liver or bone and had significantly more aberrations in NF1, AKT1 and FGFR (p-value=0.04, 0.01 and 0.03 respectively), when compared to the rest of the cohort. Finally, most of the patients (63%) had a lower number of CNA accumulated after the metastatic lineage separation compared to the common trunk, implying a late dissemination event. Conclusions: In this study, we described different metastatic dissemination events taking place in ILC. Our analyses allowed us to identify a subset of tumors characterized by slow tumor progression, indicating potential tumor dormancy, as well as evidence of late dissemination evidence for most of the patients, thus highlighting the importance of early detection through cancer screening. These findings further shed light on how ILCs evolves through time and could potentially influence the clinical management of invasive lobular breast cancer.

Citation Format: Danai Fimereli, David Venet, Mattia Rediti, David N Brown, Bram Boeckx, Marion Maetens, Samira Majjaj, Ghizlane Rouas, Maria Capra, Giuseppina Bonizzi, Federica Contaldo, Christine Galant, Martine Piccart, Giancarlo Pruneri, Denis Larsimont, Diether Lambrechts, Christine Desmedt, Françoise Rothé, Christos Sotiriou. Portraying tumor evolution of lobular breast cancer through phylogenetic analysis [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2021 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2021 Dec 7-10; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2022;82(4 Suppl):Abstract nr PD14-05.