Metadata supporting the published article: Body fatness and mTOR pathway activation of breast cancer in the Women’s Circle of Health Study
Creators: name: Cheng, Ting-Yuan David
name: Omilian, Angela R.
name: Yao, Song
name: Sanchez, Pamela V.
name: Polk, Latasia Z.
name: Zhang, Weizhou
name: Datta, Susmita
name: Bshara, Wiam
name: Ondracek, Rochelle Payne
name: Davis, Warren
name: Liu, Song
name: Hong, Chi-Chen
name: Bandera, Elisa V.
name: Khoury, Thaer
name: Ambrosone, Christine B.
Publisher: name: figshare
Year: 2020
Subjects: Biological Techniques
Cancer
Medicine
Oncology and Carcinogenesis not elsewhere classified

description: Energy imbalance plays an important role in breast cancer prognosis. Hyperactive mechanistic Target of Rapamycin (mTOR) pathway is associated with breast tumor growth, but the extent to which body fatness is associated with mTOR pathway activities in breast cancer is unclear. Here, the authors performed immunostaining for mTOR, phosphorylated (p)-mTOR, p-AKT, and p-p70S6K in tumor tissue from 590 women (464 African Americans/Blacks and 126 Whites) with newly diagnosed invasive breast cancer in the Women’s Circle of Health Study.<br><b>Data access:</b> The data supporting the findings of this study are not publicly available in order to protect patient privacy. The data will be made available to authorized researchers who have submitted an IRB application. Please apply to the WCHS committee, email address: <b>tingyuan.cheng@ufl.edu </b>for access to this dataset. <br><b>Patient consent and study approval</b>: All participants provided written informed consent to take part in the study. The protocol was approved by the Institutional Review Boards of all participating institutions, including Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center and Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey.<br><b>Study aims and methodology</b>:Energy imbalance plays an important role in breast cancer prognosis: compared with individuals with normal weight (18.5-24.99 kg/m<sup>2</sup>) at diagnosis, those with obesity (body mass index [BMI] ≥30 kg/m<sup>2</sup>) are associated with 30% increased risk of all-cause or breast cancer-specific mortality, regardless of menopausal status or tumor estrogen receptor (ER) status.The mTOR pathway is activated by energy influx, amino acids, and insulin-like growth factors (IGFs), and activation of the pathway promotes several cancer hallmarks, such as cell proliferation and angiogenesis, and is associated with increased risk of breast cancer recurrence.In this study, the authors investigated the mTOR pathway activities in breast tumors in association with body size, i.e., BMI, waist circumference (WC), and waist/hip ratio (WHR), as well as body composition, i.e., fat mass, fat mass index, and percent body fat. The hypothesis was that mTOR pathway activities would be higher in women with larger body size and more fat mass, compared to those with smaller body size and less fat mass. Because the influence of obesity may differ between the ER+ and ER- subtypes of breast cancer, they also examined the mTOR-body fatness associations stratified by ER status.Study participants were breast cancer cases based on the Women’s Circle of Health Study (WCHS), a multi-site case-control study in New York City and New Jersey designed to investigate genetic and lifestyle risk factors for aggressive breast cancer. Cases were self-identified Black and White women, 20-75 years of age, with no previous history of cancer other than non-melanoma skin cancer, and diagnosed within nine months of ascertainment with primary, histologically-confirmed, invasive breast cancer or ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS). The final dataset consisted of 590 cases, including 464 black women (299 ER+ cases and 165 ER- cases) and 126 white women (97 ER+ cases and 29 ER- cases), who had data on all four assayed mTOR pathway proteins. Clinical and tumor characteristics, including the expression status of hormone receptors (HR, i.e., ER and progesterone receptor [PR]) and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2), were obtained from the pathology reports. The following are described in more detail in the published article: immunohistochemistry and image analysis, anthropometric and body composition measurements and statistical analysis.<br><b>Data supporting the figures, tables and supplementary tables in the published article:</b>The data file <b>WCHS mTOR analysis</b> is in .<b>SAS</b> file format, and contains all the data that support the findings of this study.<br><b>Software needed to access data</b>: The SAS statistical software is required to access the data file WCHS mTOR analysis.<br>