Differential involvement of RASSF2 hypermethylation in breast cancer subtypes and their prognosis

Breast cancer is a heterogeneous disease that can be subdivided into clinical, histopathological and molecular subtypes (luminal A-like, luminal B-like/HER2-negative, luminal B-like/HER2-positive, HER2-positive, and triple-negative). The study of new molecular factors is essential to obtain further insights into the mechanisms involved in the tumorigenesis of each tumor subtype. RASSF2 is a gene that is hypermethylated in breast cancer and whose clinical value has not been previously studied. The hypermethylation of RASSF1 and RASSF2 genes was analyzed in 198 breast tumors of different subtypes. The effect of the demethylating agent 5-aza-2′-deoxycytidine in the re-expression of these genes was examined in triple-negative (BT-549), HER2 (SK-BR-3), and luminal cells (T-47D). Different patterns of RASSF2 expression for distinct tumor subtypes were detected by immunohistochemistry. RASSF2 hypermethylation was much more frequent in luminal subtypes than in non-luminal tumors (p = 0.001). The re-expression of this gene by lentiviral transduction contributed to the differential cell proliferation and response to antineoplastic drugs observed in luminal compared with triple-negative cell lines. RASSF2 hypermethylation is associated with better prognosis in multivariate statistical analysis (P = 0.039). In conclusion, RASSF2 gene is differently methylated in luminal and non-luminal tumors and is a promising suppressor gene with clinical involvement in breast cancer.