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Somatic pathogenic variants in the normal mammary gland of sporadic breast cancer patients.

The mammary gland undergoes hormonally stimulated cycles of proliferation, lactation and involution. We hypothesized that these factors increase the mutational burden in glandular tissue and may explain high cancer incidence rate in the general population and recurrent disease. Hence, we investigated the DNA sequence variants in the normal mammary gland, tumor and peripheral blood from 52 reportedly sporadic breast cancer patients, including breast-conserving surgery cases. Targeted resequencing of 542 cancer associated genes revealed mosaic somatic pathogenic variants of: PIK3CA, TP53, AKT1, MAP3K1, CDH1, RB1, NCOR1, MED12, CBFB, TBX3 and TSHR in the normal mammary gland, at considerable allelic frequencies (9x10-2 to 5.2x10-1) indicating clonal expansion. Further evaluation of the frequently damaged PIK3CA and TP53 genes by ultra-sensitive duplex sequencing demonstrated a diversified picture of multiple low level-mosaic (in 10-2 to 10-4 alleles) hotspot pathogenic variants. Our results raise a question about the oncogenic potential in non-tumor mammary gland tissue of breast-conserving surgery patients.

Click on a Dataset ID in the table below to learn more, and to find out who to contact about access to these data

Dataset ID Description Technology Samples
EGAD00001008327 HiSeq X Ten NextSeq 550 156
EGAD00010002250 Illumina 50
EGAD00010002251 Illumina 100
Publications Citations
High prevalence of somatic PIK3CA and TP53 pathogenic variants in the normal mammary gland tissue of sporadic breast cancer patients revealed by duplex sequencing.
NPJ Breast Cancer 8: 2022 76
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