IBMS BoneKEy | BoneKEy Watch
Pavlovic et al. MAF expression linked with bone relapse after primary breast cancer
DOI:10.1038/bonekey.2016.12
Pavlovic et al. sought to identify potential biomarkers that could flag up which female patients with early stage breast cancer were at high risk of bone metastasis.
The authors used a xenograft mouse model as a source of cells very likely to metastasize to bone. They then performed in vivo selection in nude mice to obtain cells with an even propensity to spread to bone. These cells were then subjected to comparative genomic hybridization to determine the number of copy number aberrations (CNAs) present.
Primary breast cancer datasets from human patients were searched for the CNAs associated with the highest risk of bone metastasis and the clinical outcomes of the individuals identified were cross referenced from the follow up data. The CNA found within the gene encoding the transcription factor MAF, which mediates metastasis from breast to bone via regulation of parathyroid hormone related protein, was identified as the most likely predictive marker of bone metastasis.
Overexpression of MAF within primary breast tumors was shown to be associated with secondary tumors in bone but not in liver or brain, so could have potential as a specific predictive biomarker.
Editor’s comment: The observation that MAF oncogene specifically mediates breast cancer bone metastasis strongly suggests that this factor may enable the identification of patients with early-stage breast cancer at high risk of bone relapse.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.