Abstract LB-325: Multi-omics and immuno-oncology profiling of an Asian breast cancer cohort enriched in young and premenopausal patients
Authors: Park Yeon Hee , Ding Ying , Cho Soonweng , Lee Soo-Hyeon , Jung Hae Hyun , Chung Woosung , Kim Jinho , Park Woong-Yang , Powell Eric , Vizcarra Pamela , Deng Shibing , Lee Se Kyung , Kim Seok Won , Lee Jeong Eon , Kim Ji-Yeon , Ahn Jin Seok , Im Young-Hyuck , Nam Seok Jin , Kan Zhengyan 
Published: July 2016

Breast cancers (BC) in younger, premenopausal patients (YBC) tend to be more aggressive with worse prognosis, higher chance of relapse and poorer response to endocrine therapies compared to breast cancers in older patients (OBC). The proportion of YBC (age ? 40) among BC in East Asia is estimated to be 16-32%, significantly higher than the 7% reported in Western countries. Genomic and molecular characterizations have deepened our understanding of breast cancer biology in areas ranging from intrinsic subtypes to treatment responses, however, the molecular bases of Asian YBC remains poorly characterized. We have performed whole-exome sequencing (WES), whole-transcriptome sequencing (WTS) and high coverage targeted sequencing on tumor and matched normal samples from 133 Korean BC patients consisting of 74 YBC cases (age ? 40). We further performed immunohistochemistry (IHC) analyses to characterize tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) in 46 tumors using four markers (CD45, CD4, CD8 and CD163). We found that BRCA1/2 germline deleterious mutations are enriched in YBC and the ER+/HER2- subtype, indicating that Asian ER+ YBC has a significant germline contribution. MutSig analysis4 identified ARID1A as a significantly mutated gene, implicating chromatin modeling as a cancer driver in Asian BC. Differential expression analyses suggested that Asian YBC differ in energy metabolism and are more active in protein synthesis than OBC tumors, whereas OBC is more proliferative than YBC. Using gene expression signatures representing distinct immune cell types and immunohistochemistry, we classified our cohort into four subtypes of varying TIL activities: high, medium, low and quiet. The majority of immunogenic cases with high TIL levels lie in ER+ or HER2+ subtypes although higher proportion is seen in TNBC. Moreover, YBC tumors appear to harbor lower levels of TIL activities than OBC, suggesting that younger patients may be less likely to benefit from immunomodulatory therapies than older patients. To our knowledge, this is the first large-scale multi-omics study of Asian breast cancer and would significantly contribute to the compendium of molecular data available for young, premenopausal breast cancer. While the major landmarks in the molecular and immune landscape of Asian BC look similar to that of the predominantly Caucasian BC cohorts, we have identified a number of distinguishing characteristics pointing to distinctive oncogenic mechanisms underlying Asian BC.

Citation Format: Yeon Hee Park, Ying Ding, Soonweng Cho, Soo-Hyeon Lee, Hae Hyun Jung, Woosung Chung, Jinho Kim, Woong-Yang Park, Eric Powell, Pamela Vizcarra, Shibing Deng, Se Kyung Lee, Seok Won Kim, Jeong Eon Lee, Ji-Yeon Kim, Jin Seok Ahn, Young-Hyuck Im, Seok Jin Nam, Zhengyan Kan. Multi-omics and immuno-oncology profiling of an Asian breast cancer cohort enriched in young and premenopausal patients. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 107th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2016 Apr 16-20; New Orleans, LA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2016;76(14 Suppl):Abstract nr LB-325.