Reverse phase protein array identification of triple-negative breast cancer subtypes and comparison with mRNA molecular subtypes

BACKGROUND: Reverse phase protein array (RPPA) analysis, allows investigation of potential targets at the functional protein level,. We identified TNBC subtypes at the protein level using RPPA and compared them with mRNA molecular subtypes (TNBCtype, TNBCtype-4, and PAM50) that is unique in its availability of both RPPA and mRNA analyses. METHODS: We classified the samples from 80 TNBC patients using both k-means and hierarchical consensus clustering analysis and performed Ingenuity Pathway Analysis. We also investigated whether we could reproduce the mRNA molecular subtypes using the RPPA dataset. RESULTS: Both clustering methods divided all samples into 2 clusters that were biologically the same. The top canonical pathways included inflammation, hormonal receptors, and MAPK signaling pathways for the first cluster [“inflammation and hormonal-related (I/H) subtype”] and the GADD45, DNA damage, and p53 signaling pathways for the second cluster [“DNA damage (DD)-related subtype”]. Further k-means cluster analysis identified 5 TNBC clusters. Comparison between sample classification using the 5 RPPA-based k-means cluster subtypes and 6 gene-expression-based TNBCtype molecular subtypes showed significant association between the 2 classifications (p = 0.017). CONCLUSIONS: The I/H and DD subtypes identified by RPPA advance our understanding of TNBC’s heterogeneity from the functional proteomic perspective.