Research article
Early detection of breast cancer based on gene-expression patterns in peripheral blood cells
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* Corresponding author: Praveen Sharma praveen.sharma@diagenic.com
1 DiaGenic ASA, Oslo, Norway
2 Departments of Health, Research and Policy, and Statistics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
3 Department of Radiology, Ullevål University Hospital, Oslo, Norway
4 Department of Clinical Chemistry, Ullevål University Hospital, Oslo, Norway
5 Department of Pathology, The Gade Institute, Haukeland University Hospital, Norway
6 Department of Pathology, Ullevål University Hospital, Oslo, Norway
7 Department of Surgery, Ullevål University Hospital, Oslo, Norway
8 Department of Genetics, The Norwegian Radium Hospital; and University of Oslo, Faculty division, The Norwegian Radium Hospital, Oslo Norway
Breast Cancer Research 2005, 7:R634-R644 doi:10.1186/bcr1203
See related letter by Li at http://breast-cancer-research.com/content/7/5/E5
Published: 14 June 2005Abstract
Introduction
Existing methods to detect breast cancer in asymptomatic patients have limitations, and there is a need to develop more accurate and convenient methods. In this study, we investigated whether early detection of breast cancer is possible by analyzing gene-expression patterns in peripheral blood cells.
Methods
Using macroarrays and nearest-shrunken-centroid method, we analyzed the expression pattern of 1,368 genes in peripheral blood cells of 24 women with breast cancer and 32 women with no signs of this disease. The results were validated using a standard leave-one-out cross-validation approach.
Results
We identified a set of 37 genes that correctly predicted the diagnostic class in at least 82% of the samples. The majority of these genes had a decreased expression in samples from breast cancer patients, and predominantly encoded proteins implicated in ribosome production and translation control. In contrast, the expression of some defense-related genes was increased in samples from breast cancer patients.
Conclusion
The results show that a blood-based gene-expression test can be developed to detect breast cancer early in asymptomatic patients. Additional studies with a large sample size, from women both with and without the disease, are warranted to confirm or refute this finding.