Metadata supporting the article: Semaphorin 7a is a biomarker for recurrence in postpartum breast cancer
Creators: name: Borges, Virginia F
name: Junxiao Hu
name: Young, Chloe
name: Maggard, Jaron
name: Parris, Hannah
name: Dexiang Gao
name: Lyons, Traci R
Publisher: name: figshare
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: Biological Techniques
subject: Cancer
subject: Medicine
subject: 111201 Cancer Cell Biology
subject: FOS: Clinical medicine
subject: FOS: Clinical medicine
subject: 111203 Cancer Genetics
subject: Biomarkers

description: Postpartum breast cancer (PPBC), is currently defined as a breast cancer diagnosis occurring within ten years following childbirth. PPBCs have high risk for metastasis. In pre-clinical murine models, semaphorin 7a (SEMA7A) drives the metastatic potential of postpartum mammary tumors. In this study, the authors hypothesized that SEMA7A may drive metastasis of PPBC in women.<br><b>Data access</b>: The data generated and analysed during the current study are not publicly available to protect patient privacy, but will be made available from the corresponding author, Dr Virginia F Borges (email address: <b>Virginia.borges@cuanschutz.edu</b>), on reasonable request. Depending on the request researchers may need to submit an Institutional Review Board (IRB) application.<br><b>Study approval and patient consent</b>: The clinical trials under which all data and human tissues were collected for this research were conducted according to Declaration of Helsinki Principles and with approval of the Colorado Multiple Institution Review Board. Subjects were enrolled before 2010 through a retrospective consent exempt protocol and after 2010 they were prospectively enrolled and provided informed consent for participation.<br><b>Study aims and methodology</b>: The same group of scientists has recently reported that a novel protein may be implicated in PPBC in pre-clinical models. Semaphorin 7a (SEMA7A) is a GPI-linked member of the Semaphorin family of signaling proteins. SEMA7A is involved in many normal and diseased biological processes. Previously, the authors reported from available genomic databases that <i>SEMA7A</i> mRNA expression is increased and associated with worse prognosis in breast cancer. Also, they have shown that increased SEMA7A protein expression promotes tumor growth, motility, invasion and lymphangiogenesis. Finally, in a small subset of postpartum women they observed increased expression of SEMA7A in their normal breast tissue.In this pilot study, the authors sought to investigate the role of SEMA7A expression in young women’s breast cancer (YWBC), to understand the underlying molecular basis behind the intensity of PPBC.The study included 113 cases from the Colorado Young Women’s Breast Cancer Cohort, who had an increased risk for metastatic recurrence in PPBC (these data are linked to a previous study). There were 47 nulliparous patients and 66 PPBC patients that made it into the study. Using an antibody raised against amino acids 371-441 in the SEMA7A protein sequence, which will recognize both isoforms of SEMA7A due to sequence homology, the authors compared SEMA7A expression with multiple breast cancer clinical characteristics that are known prognostic indicators across all 113 cases.For more details on subject selection criteria, immunohistochemistry and statistical analysis, please read the related article.<br><b>Data supporting the figures and the supplementary files in the published article</b>: Dataset <b>Human Sem7a Paper dataset.xlsx </b>is in <b>.xlsx</b> file format. The file includes data on Semaphorin 7a expression (immunohistochemistry data), as well as clinical data and pathologic characteristics.<br>