Cervical cancer is responsible for 10–15% of cancer-related deaths in women worldwide1,2. The etiological role of infection with high-risk human papilloma viruses (HPV) in cervical carcinomas is well established3. Previous studies have implicated somatic mutations in PIK3CA, PTEN, TP53, STK11 and KRAS4–7 as well as several copy number alterations in the pathogenesis of cervical carcinomas8,9. Here, we report whole exome sequencing analysis of 115 cervical carcinoma-normal paired samples, transcriptome sequencing of 79 cases and whole genome sequencing of 14 tumor-normal pairs. Novel somatic mutations in 79 primary squamous cell carcinomas include recurrent E322K substitutions in the MAPK1 gene (8%), inactivating mutations in the HLA-B gene (9%), and mutations in EP300 (16%), FBXW7 (15%), NFE2L2 (4%) TP53 (5%) and ERBB2 (6%). We also observed somatic ELF3 (13%) and CBFB (8%) mutations in 24 adenocarcinomas. Squamous cell carcinomas had higher frequencies of somatic mutations in the Tp*C dinucleotide context than adenocarcinomas. Gene expression levels at HPV integration sites were significantly higher in tumors with HPV integration compared with expression of the same genes in tumors without viral integration at the same site. These data demonstrate several recurrent genomic alterations in cervical carcinomas that suggest novel strategies to combat this disease.

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Aims: microRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of small noncoding RNAs that can act as key modulators in tumorigenesis-related genes. Specifically, it has been suggested that miR-21 overexpression plays a role in the development and progression of breast cancer. So far, the role of miRNAs in pregnancy-associated breast cancer (PABC) has not been investigated.Methods and Results: We evaluated miR-21 expression by quantitative RT-PCR in 35 patients, 25 with PABC and 10 control breast cancer cases not pregnancy-associated with similar clinicopathological features. We then analyzed protein expression for PTEN, BCL2 and PDCD4 as miR-21 target genes by IHC, and finally correlated the results with patients' clinicopathological features.Significant overexpression of miR-21 in PABC tumors compared to normal adjacent tissue was found. Overexpression of miR-21 was frequently found in high grade tumors with loss of hormone receptor expression and was significantly associated with positive lymph nodes (p=0.025). In PABC patients, PTEN, BCL2 and PDCD4 target protein expression was decreased in 80%, 76% and 40% respectively.Conclusion: Our study supports the involvement of miR-21 in breast cancer progression and metastasis formation in PABC implying a role of this miRNA as a marker for poor prognosis in PABC patients.

Tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) reflect the host immune response against cancer cells. Immunomodulators have been recently suggested as a novel therapeutic strategy against triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). However, the TIL profile in TNBC has not been thoroughly investigated. In the present study, the percentage, immunophenotype and genetic profiles of TILs in pre-surgical tumor samples of patients with TNBC were evaluated prior to neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC). Patients diagnosed with breast cancer at Hospital San José TecSalud were consecutively and prospectively enrolled in the present study between August 2011 and August 2015. The pathological response to NAC was evaluated using the de Miller-Payne and MD Anderson Cancer Center system. TIL percentage (low, intermediate, and high) was evaluated using special hematoxylin-eosin staining on the core needle biopsies. The immunophenotype of TILs was assessed by immunohistochemistry (IHC) for CD3 + , CD4 + and CD8 + . In addition, the gene expression profile of CD3, CD4, CD8, CD20, CD45 , forkhead box P3, interleukin 6, programmed cell death 1 and CD274 molecule was assessed in all patients. A total of 26 samples from patients with TNBC prior to NAC were included in the present study. TILs were low in 30.7%, intermediate in 38.4% and elevated in 30.7% of tumors. CD3 + and CD4 + counts were associated with the pathological response to NAC (P=0.04). Finally, an overexpression pattern of CD3, CD4, CD8, CD45 and CD20 genes was observed in patients with a partial or complete pathological response. The present results demonstrated that TILs may predict the pathological response to NAC in patients with TNBC. Furthermore, a more accurate association was identified between the high expression levels of CD3, CD4, CD8, CD45 and CD20 genes and partial and complete pathological response, compared with the association between high expression and IHC alone.