Predictors of primary breast cancers responsiveness to preoperative Epirubicin/Cyclophosphamide-based chemotherapy: translation of microarray data into clinically useful predictive signatures

BACKGROUND: Our goal was to identify gene signatures predictive of response to preoperative systemic chemotherapy (PST) with epirubicin/cyclophosphamide (EC) in patients with primary breast cancer. METHODS: Needle biopsies were obtained pre-treatment from 83 patients with breast cancer and mRNA was profiled on Affymetrix HG-U133A arrays. Response ranged from pathologically confirmed complete remission (pCR), to partial remission (PR), to stable or progressive disease, "No Change" (NC). A primary analysis was performed in breast tissue samples from 56 patients and 5 normal healthy individuals as a training cohort for predictive marker identification. Gene signatures identifying individuals most likely to respond completely to PST-EC were extracted by combining several statistical methods and filtering criteria. In order to optimize prediction of non responding tumors Student's t-test and Wilcoxon test were also applied. An independent cohort of 27 patients was used to challenge the predictive signatures. A k-Nearest neighbor algorithm as well as two independent linear partial least squares determinant analysis (PLS-DA) models based on the training cohort were selected for classification of the test samples. The average specificity of these predictions was greater than 74% for pCR, 100% for PR and greater than 62% for NC. All three classification models could identify all pCR cases. RESULTS: The differential expression of 59 genes in the training and the test cohort demonstrated capability to predict response to PST-EC treatment. Based on the training cohort a classifier was constructed following a decision tree. First, a transcriptional profile capable to distinguish cancerous from normal tissue was identified. Then, a "favorable outcome signature" (31 genes) and a "poor outcome signature" (26 genes) were extracted from the cancer specific signatures. This stepwise implementation could predict pCR and distinguish between NC and PR in a subsequent set of patients. Both PLS-DA models were implemented to discriminate all three response classes in one step. CONCLUSION: In this study signatures were identified capable to predict clinical outcome in an independent set of primary breast cancer patients undergoing PST-EC.