Abstract PR09: Clonal dynamics during breast cancer dormancy and recurrence
Authors: Damrauer Jeffrey , Alvarez James V. 
Published: May 2018

Tumor progression is the process by which cancer cells acquire increasingly aggressive characteristics, including resistance to therapies and an increased propensity to metastasize. The combination of these two processes results in recurrence of tumors in distant sites, and is chiefly responsible for cancer mortality. For instance, tumor recurrence is the leading cause of death from breast cancer. Recurrent breast cancers are thought to arise from a population of residual cells that survive treatment and persist, often in a dormant state, for years or decades before resuming proliferation. Primary breast tumors are heterogeneous, harboring different subclones of (epi)genetically distinct cells, and tumor recurrence may result from the progressive outgrowth of aggressive subclones. As a consequence, understanding the clonal dynamics of dormancy and recurrence is essential for developing strategies to prevent or treat recurrence. However, studying these processes in patients is challenging, given the difficulty in identifying residual disease and obtaining recurrent tumors.

To overcome these obstacles, we have used DNA barcoding to study the clonal dynamics of breast cancer recurrence in inducible genetically engineered mouse models. These models exhibit key features of breast cancer progression as it occurs in women, including the survival of cancer cells following therapy and their eventual spontaneous recurrence. In these models doxycycline (dox) administration induces expression of an oncogene (e.g., HER2/neu, Wnt1, or Myc), leading to mammary tumor formation. Subsequent withdrawal of dox induces oncogene downregulation and complete tumor regression, mimicking targeted therapies. However, a cluster of residual cells survives oncogene downregulation and resides in a dormant, nonproliferative state in the mammary gland, and these cells eventually reinitiate proliferation to form a recurrent tumor.

Using these models, we find that breast tumors can follow two distinct evolutionary routes to recurrence. Approximately half of the recurrent tumors exhibit a striking clonal dominance in which one or two subclones comprise the vast majority of the tumor. These clonal recurrent tumors exhibit evidence of de novo acquisition of Met amplification, and are sensitive to small-molecule Met inhibitors. The other half of recurrent tumors exhibit marked polyclonality, with thousands of subclones and a clonal architecture very similar to primary tumors. These polyclonal recurrent tumors are not sensitive to Met inhibitors, but have acquired dependence upon an epigenetic pathway for their growth and survival and are sensitive to drugs targeting this pathway. These results suggest that tumor recurrence can proceed via multiple independent routes, producing recurrent tumors with distinct clonal dynamics, genetic alterations, and drug sensitivities.

This abstract is also being presented as Poster B45.

Citation Format: Jeffrey Damrauer, James V. Alvarez. Clonal dynamics during breast cancer dormancy and recurrence [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Special Conference: Advances in Modeling Cancer in Mice: Technology, Biology, and Beyond; 2017 Sep 24-27; Orlando, Florida. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2018;78(10 Suppl):Abstract nr PR09.