Elevated Resistin Gene Expression in African American Estrogen and Progesterone Receptor Negative Breast Cancer

Abstract

IntroductionAfrican American (AA) women diagnosed with breast cancer are more likely to have aggressive subtypes. Investigating differentially expressed genes between patient populations may help explain racial health disparities. Resistin, one such gene, is linked to inflammation, obesity, and breast cancer risk. Previous studies indicated that resistin expression is higher in serum and tissue of AA breast cancer patients compared to Caucasian American (CA) patients. However, resistin expression levels have not been compared between AA and CA patients in a stage- and subtype-specific context. Breast cancer prognosis and treatments vary by subtype. This work investigates differential resistin gene expression in human breast cancer tissues of specific stages, receptor subtypes, and menopause statuses in AA and CA women.MethodsDifferential gene expression analysis was performed using human breast cancer gene expression data from The Cancer Genome Atlas. We performed inter-race resistin gene expression level comparisons looking at receptor status and stage-specific data between AA and CA samples. DESeq was run to test for differentially expressed resistin values.ResultsResistin RNA was higher in AA women overall, with highest values in receptor negative subtypes. Estrogen-, progesterone-, and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2- negative groups showed statistically significant elevated resistin levels in Stage I and II AA women compared to CA women. In inter-racial comparisons, AA women had significantly higher levels of resistin regardless of menopause status. In whole population comparisons, resistin expression was higher among Stage I and III estrogen receptor negative cases. In comparisons of molecular subtypes, resistin levels were significant higher in triple negative than in luminal A breast cancer.ConclusionResistin gene expression levels were significantly higher in receptor negative subtypes, especially estrogen receptor negative cases in AA women. Resistin may serve as an early breast cancer biomarker and possible therapeutic target for AA breast cancer.

Impacts of RETN genetic polymorphism on breast cancer development

“…Thus, individuals with hereditary breast cancer could benefit from epigenetic screening for early diagnosis and treatment that prevents the disease from developing. RETN polymorphisms have been identified in various cancers, including colon and lung [16,20,21], but data are scant as to the involvement of RETN polymorphisms in breast cancer. As far as we are aware, our study is the first to investigate the distributions of the rs3745367, rs7408174, rs1862513 and rs3219175 SNPs and their associations with the development and progression of breast cancer in Chinese Han women.…”

“…RETN SNPs have been found to correlated with worsening disease in Chinese Han patients with lung cancer [20]. There is in vitro evidence of upregulated RETN gene expression in samples of human breast cancer tissue [21] and polycystic ovary syndrome [22], but up until now, no association has been observed between RETN gene polymorphisms and breast cancer prognosis. Here we investigated some RETN SNPs with higher impact or risks in various cancers.…”

Comprehensive investigation of a novel differentially expressed lncRNA expression profile signature to assess the survival of patients with colorectal adenocarcinoma

“…Finally, we obtained the expression profiles of 7581 lncRNAs. We then filtered the differentially expressed lncRNAs (DELs) using two individual R packages: edgeR [61, 62] and DEseq [63, 64], with Padj < 0.05 and logFC > 1 of expression level between comparison of tumor and adjacent normal colon tissue. Since a strategy that combines edgeR and DESeq is proposed for large sample sizes from TCGA [65], here in the current study, this combination of edgeR and DESeq was adopted.…”

Resistin potentiates chemoresistance and stemness of breast cancer cells: Implications for racially disparate therapeutic outcomes

“…Importantly, expression of resistin was also found to affect the overall clinical outcome [25]. Further, we and others have reported increased levels of resistin in AA BC patients relative to those in Caucasian patients, and resistin is also shown to promote breast tumor growth and aggressiveness [13, 14, 26, 27]. Interestingly, elevated serum levels of resistin have also been reported in chemotherapy-treated BC patients [28].…”