Interval breast cancer is associated with interferon immune response

Abstract

Background: The aggressive nature of breast cancers detected between planned mammographic screens, so-called interval cancers, remains elusive. Here, we aim to characterise underlying molecular features of interval cancer.

Methods: From 672 patients with invasive breast cancer, we analysed gene expression differences between 90 'true' interval cancer cases (i.e. women with low-dense breasts defined as per cent mammographic density <25%) and 310 screen-detected tumours while accounting for PAM50 subtypes and thus overall tumour aggressiveness. We computed an interval cancer gene expression profile (IC-Gx) in a total of 2270 breast tumours (regardless of interval cancer status) and tested for association with expression-based immune subtypes in breast cancer. In addition, we investigated the contribution of inherited and somatic genetic variants in distinct features of interval cancer.

Results: We identified 8331 genes nominally associated with interval cancer (P-value < 0.05, fold-change > 1.5). Gene set enrichment analysis showed immune-related pathways as key processes altered in interval cancer. Our IC-Gx, based on 47 genes with the strongest associations (false discovery rate < 0.05), was found to be associated mainly with immune subtypes involving interferon response. We isolated an interaction network of interval cancer and interferon genes for which a significant load of somatic and germline variants in class I interferon genes was observed.

Conclusion: We identified novel molecular features of interval breast cancer highlighting interferon pathways as a potential target for prevention or treatment.

Keywords: Interferon immune response; Interval breast cancer; Mammographic density; PAM50 subtypes.