Development of a novel BRCAness score that predicts response to PARP inhibitors

BACKGROUND: BRCAness is a characteristic feature of homologous recombination deficiency (HRD) mimicking BRCA gene mutation in breast cancer. We hypothesized that a measure to quantify BRCAness that causes synthetic lethality in BRCA mutated tumors will identify responders to PARP inhibitors. METHODS: A total of 6753 breast cancer patients from 3 large independent cohorts were analyzed. A score was generated by transcriptomic profiling using gene set variation analysis algorithm on 34 BRCA1-mutation related genes selected by high AUC levels in ROC curve between BRCA1 mutation and wildtype breast cancer. RESULTS: The score was significantly associated with BRCA1 mutation, high mutation load and intratumoral heterogeneity as expected, as well as with high HRD, DNA repair and MKi67 expression regardless of BRCA mutations. High BRCAness tumors enriched not only DNA repair, but also all five Hallmark cell proliferation-related gene sets. High BRCAness tumors were significantly associated with higher cytolytic activity and with higher anti-cancerous immune cell infiltration. Not only did the breast cancer cell lines with BRCA-mutation show high score, but even the other cells in human breast cancer tumor microenvironment were contributing to the score. The BRCAness score was the highest in triple-negative breast cancer consistently in all 3 cohorts. BRCAness was associated with response to chemotherapy and correlated strongly with response to PARP inhibitor in both triple-negative and ER-positive/HER2-negative breast cancer. CONCLUSIONS: We established a novel BRCAness score using BRCA-mutation-related gene expressions and found that it associates with DNA repair and predicts response to PARP inhibitors regardless of BRCA mutation. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40364-022-00427-8.