Breast cancer, breast, immunology, genetics,

Thyroid peroxidase (TPO) is the key enzyme involved in thyroid hormone synthesis. Autoantibodies to TPO (TPOAbs) are a hallmark of autoimmune thyroid disease (AITD). Here, we highlight recent progress over several years in understanding TPO biochemistry and function in various pathologies. TPO undergoes complex post-translational modifications as a dimer in endoplasmic reticulum during secretory pathway to apical membrane of thyrocytes. In silico modelling of TPO dimer has provided new information into the two enzyme active site regions and autoantigenic determinants...

Molecular pathological epidemiology (MPE) is an integrative transdisciplinary field that addresses heterogeneous effects of exogenous and endogenous factors (collectively termed "exposures"), including microorganisms, on disease occurrence and consequence utilising molecular pathological signatures of the disease. In parallel with the paradigm of precision medicine, findings from MPE research can provide aetiological insights into tailored strategies of disease prevention and treatment. Due to the availability of molecular pathological tests on tumours, the MPE approach has been utilised predominantly in research on cancers including breast, lung, prostate, and colorectal carcinomas...

BACKGROUND: Patients with cartilage-hair hypoplasia (CHH), a rare metaphyseal chondrodysplasia, manifest severe growth failure, variable immunodeficiency and increased risk of malignancies. The impact of CHH on gynecologic and reproductive health is unknown. Vulnerability to genital infections may predispose CHH patients to prolonged human papillomavirus (HPV) infections potentially leading to cervical, vaginal and vulvar cancer. METHODS: We carried out gynecologic evaluation, pelvic ultrasound and laboratory assessment in 19 women with genetically confirmed CHH...

Accounting for about 15% of breast cancer patients, triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is responsible for 25% of disease related deaths, more frequent distant spread and visceral metastasis. However, improving survival in TNBC failed and primary resistance, immunological ignorance and tumor heterogeneity limit clinical activity of novel therapies. In view of recent molecular, genetic and immunologic insights, this review aims to describe the current status of immunological and targeted treatments from a hypothesis driven perspective...

Despite years of intensive research, breast cancer remains the leading cause of death in women worldwide. New technologies including oncolytic virus therapies, virus, and phage display are among the most powerful and advanced methods that have emerged in recent years with potential applications in cancer prevention and treatment. Oncolytic virus therapy is an interesting strategy for cancer treatment. Presently, a number of viruses from different virus families are under laboratory and clinical investigation as oncolytic therapeutics...

Cytokines are known as important regulators of the cancer involved in inflammatory and immunological responses. This fact and plethora of gene polymorphism data prompted us to investigate IL1 gene polymorphisms in breast cancer (BC) patients. Totally, 530 patients with BC and 628 healthy control women were studied. The genetic polymorphisms for IL1 were analyzed by Massarray Sequencing method. Three single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) identified in IL1B, IL1R1 gene are thought to influence breast cancer risk...

With the advancement of personalized cancer immunotherapies, new tools are needed to identify tumor antigens and evaluate T-cell responses in model systems, specifically those that exhibit clinically relevant tumor progression. Key transgenic mouse models of breast cancer are generated and maintained on the FVB genetic background, and one such model is the mouse mammary tumor virus-polyomavirus middle T antigen (MMTV-PyMT) mouse-an immunocompetent transgenic mouse that exhibits spontaneous mammary tumor development and metastasis with high penetrance...

Purpose: Unprecedented clinical outcomes have been achieved in a variety of cancers by targeting immune checkpoint molecules. This preclinical study investigates heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1), an immunosuppressive enzyme that is expressed in a wide variety of cancers, as a potential immune checkpoint target in the context of a chemotherapy-elicited antitumor immune response. We evaluate repurposing tin mesoporphyrin (SnMP), which has demonstrated safety and efficacy targeting hepatic HO in the clinic for the treatment of hyperbilirubinemia, as an immune checkpoint blockade therapy for the treatment of cancer...

BACKGROUND: The interleukins (ILs) are a large family of endogenous cytokines that are crucial in the regulation of inflammation and immunological responses. The IL-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1RN) has been found to be associated with risk breast cancer (BC) in Korean and Indian women. However, little information is found about the polymorphisms of IL-1RN in Chinese Han BC patients. METHODS: We investigated the association between single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in IL-1RN and BC risk in a case-control study that included 530 BC cases and 628 healthy controls...

The mechanisms by which hypoxic tumours evade immunological pressure and anti-tumour immunity remain elusive. Here, we report that two hypoxia-responsive microRNAs, miR-25 and miR-93, are important for establishing an immunosuppressive tumour microenvironment by downregulating expression of the DNA sensor cGAS. Mechanistically, miR-25/93 targets NCOA3, an epigenetic factor that maintains basal levels of cGAS expression, leading to repression of cGAS during hypoxia. This allows hypoxic tumour cells to escape immunological responses induced by damage-associated molecular pattern molecules, specifically the release of mitochondrial DNA...

Metastatic brain tumors continue to be a clinical problem, despite new therapeutic advances in cancer treatment. Brain metastases (BMs) are among the most common mass lesions in the brain that are resistant to chemotherapies, have a very poor prognosis, and currently lack any efficient diagnostic tests. Predictions estimate that about 40% of lung and breast cancer patients will develop BM. Despite this, very little is known about the immunological and genetic aberrations that drive tumorigenesis in BM. In this study, we demonstrate the infiltration of mast cells (MCs) in a large cohort of human BM samples with different tissues of origin for primary cancer...

Increasing evidence suggests that ionizing radiation therapy (RT) in combination with checkpoint immunotherapy is highly effective in treating a subset of cancers. To better understand the limited responses to this combination we analysed the genetic, microenvironmental, and immune factors in tumours derived from a transgenic breast cancer model. We identified two tumours with similar growth characteristics but different RT responses primarily due to an antitumour immune response. The combination of RT and checkpoint immunotherapy resulted in cures in the responsive but not the unresponsive tumours...

Biologics are substances made from a living organism or its products. These include genes, proteins (eg, antibodies, receptors, enzymes, inhibitors), recombinant proteins, and fusion proteins. Biologics often are produced using recombinant DNA technology. For example, monoclonal antibodies are produced by inserting human genes into immortalized cell cultures, which then produce the gene product (ie, an antibody) in large quantity. Another approach is to fuse genetic material from nonhuman sources (eg, mice) with human genetic material...

We report the discovery of a claudin-low molecular subtype of high-grade bladder cancer that shares characteristics with the homonymous subtype of breast cancer. Claudin-low bladder tumors were enriched for multiple genetic features including increased rates of RB1 , EP300 , and NCOR1 mutations; increased frequency of EGFR amplification; decreased rates of FGFR3 , ELF3 , and KDM6A mutations; and decreased frequency of PPARG amplification. While claudin-low tumors showed the highest expression of immune gene signatures, they also demonstrated gene expression patterns consistent with those observed in active immunosuppression...

INTRODUCTION: Cancer developing from more than one origin is called multiple primary cancer (MPC) and is a rare situation. In this article, we report a case presenting to the Emergency Clinic with symptoms of ileus who was diagnosed with synchronous colon and breast cancer. PRESENTATION OF CASE: A 57year old male patient presented to the Emergency Clinic with abdominal pain, vomiting, constipation and lack of flatulence. The patient was taken to the operating room for emergency surgery with the diagnosis of intestinal obstruction...

Is breast cancer (BC) immunogenic? Many data suggest that it is. Many observations demonstrated the prognostic role of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) in triple negative (TN) and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER-2)-positive BC. TNBCs are poorly differentiated tumors with high genetic instability and very high heterogeneity. This heterogeneity enhances the 'danger signals' and select clone variants that could be more antigenic or, in other words, that could more strongly stimulate a host immune antitumor response...

Inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) is a rare and aggressive form of breast cancer that remains poorly understood at the molecular level. Comprehensive tumor profiling was performed to understand clinically actionable alterations in IBC. Targeted next-generation sequencing (NGS) and IHC were performed to identify activated pathways in IBC tumor tissues. siRNA studies examined the impact of IBC genomic variants in cellular models. IBC tumor tissues were further characterized for immune infiltration and immune checkpoint expression by IHC...

The majority of advanced breast cancers have genetic alterations that are potentially targetable with drugs. Through initiatives such as The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC), data can be mined to provide context for next-generation sequencing (NGS) results in the landscape of advanced breast cancer. Therapies for targets other than estrogen receptor alpha (ER) and HER2, such as cyclin-dependent kinases CDK4 and CDK6, were recently approved based on efficacy in patient subpopulations, but no predictive biomarkers have been found, leaving clinicians to continue a trial-and-error approach with each patient...

As an endoplasmic reticulum heat shock protein (HSP) 90 paralogue, glycoprotein (gp) 96 possesses immunological properties by chaperoning antigenic peptides for activation of T cells. Genetic studies in the last decade have unveiled that gp96 is also an essential master chaperone for multiple receptors and secreting proteins including Toll-like receptors (TLRs), integrins, the Wnt coreceptor, Low Density Lipoprotein Receptor-Related Protein 6 (LRP6), the latent TGFβ docking receptor, Glycoprotein A Repetitions Predominant (GARP), Glycoprotein (GP) Ib and insulin-like growth factors (IGF)...

Multiple advisory groups now recommend that high-risk smokers be screened for lung cancer by low-dose computed tomography. Given that the development of lung cancer screening programs will face many of the same issues that have challenged other cancer screening programs, the National Cancer Institute-funded Population-based Research Optimizing Screening through Personalized Regimens (PROSPR) consortium was used to identify lessons learned from the implementation of breast, cervical, and colorectal cancer screening that should inform the introduction of lung cancer screening...