Abstract PD1-07: Comprehensive characterization of matched pre-treatment biopsies and residual disease of doxorubicin treated breast cancer
Authors: Lips EH , Hoogstraat M , Mulder L , Nederlof PM , Sonke GS , Rodenhuis S , Wesseling J , Wessels LFA 
Published: March 2017

Background

Neoadjuvant chemotherapy is standard of care for locally advanced breast cancer. Unfortunately not all patients benefit from this treatment. Even after decades of research, we still cannot predict which tumor will or will not respond. This may in part be due to tumor heterogeneity, as the sample taken before treatment not necessarily represents the tumor cell population that causes therapy resistance.

Methods

To test this hypothesis, we collected pre-treatment biopsies, resection specimens, and matched blood from 21 breast cancer patients treated with doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide in a neoadjuvant setting. Specifically, tumors were selected with a tumor percentage &gt;50% after chemotherapy to enrich for resistant samples and ensure high quality data. RNA and whole exome sequencing were performed to characterize somatic mutations, copy number alterations and gene expression profiles. Histopathological characteristics were determined to obtain a comprehensive profile of all tumor samples.

Results

The comparisons of somatic variants and copy number alterations revealed a very diverse image: in several cases, high-level amplifications, large genomic gains or losses, and mutations in known oncogenes or tumor suppressors such as MAP3K1 and RUNX1 were either lost or gained during treatment, while in other cases no such changes were detected. We observed a remarkable number of genetic alterations involved in cell cycle progression and DNA damage checkpoints, including amplification of MDM2, CCND1 and CDK4, and copy number loss or mutations in CDKN1B and ATM. Strikingly, both cases of CDKN1B loss were identified in pre-treatment biopsies and no longer detectable in the surgery specimen. In contrast, CCND1, CDK4 and MDM2 amplifications were retained, although CCND1 expression decreased significantly in CCND1 amplified tumors.

In addition, eighty percent of tumors showed a decreased cell proliferation after chemotherapy, where the high-proliferative ER+ (Luminal B) tumors were most strongly affected. This trend was also visible in a validation cohort of 94 ER+ samples, but the prognosis of Luminal B tumors that showed a decrease in proliferation was still significantly worse than that of Luminal A tumors that did not show an altered proliferation rate.

Conclusion

Our results confirm that biologically relevant genomic alterations can differ between pre- and post-treatment samples, which greatly impacts biomarker discovery. In addition, our findings emphasize the chemotherapy insensitivity of CCND1 amplified ER+ breast cancers, and stress the need for better treatment regimens for these patients. In contrast, genomic loss of CDKN1B may be a marker for sensitivity to doxorubicin.

Citation Format: Lips EH, Hoogstraat M, Mulder L, Nederlof PM, Sonke GS, Rodenhuis S, Wesseling J, Wessels LFA. Comprehensive characterization of matched pre-treatment biopsies and residual disease of doxorubicin treated breast cancer [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2016 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2016 Dec 6-10; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2017;77(4 Suppl):Abstract nr PD1-07.