Peripheral Blood Transcriptome in Breast Cancer Patients as a Source of Less Invasive Immune Biomarkers for Personalized Medicine, and Implications for Triple Negative Breast Cancer

Abstract

Transcriptome studies of peripheral blood cells can advance our understanding of the systemic immune response to the presence of cancer and the mechanisms underlying cancer onset and progression. This enables the identification of novel minimally invasive immune biomarkers for early cancer detection and personalized cancer management and may bring forward new immunotherapy options. Recent blood gene expression analyses in breast cancer (BC) identified distinct patient subtypes that differed in the immune reaction to cancer and were distinct from the clinical BC subtypes, which are categorized based on expression of specific receptors on tumor cells. Introducing new BC subtypes based on peripheral blood gene expression profiles may be appropriate, since it may assist in BC prognosis, the identification of patients likely to benefit from immunotherapy, and treatment efficacy monitoring. Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is an aggressive, heterogeneous, and difficult-to-treat disease, and identification of novel biomarkers for this BC is crucial for clinical decision-making. A few studies have reported TNBC-enriched blood transcriptional signatures, mostly related to strong inflammation and augmentation of altered immune signaling, that can differentiate TNBC from other classical BC subtypes and facilitate diagnosis. Future research is geared toward transitioning from expression signatures in unfractionated blood cells to those in immune cell subpopulations.

Transcriptomic Analyses Reveal Long Non-Coding RNA in Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells as a Novel Biomarker for Diagnosis and Prognosis of Hepatocellular Carcinoma

“…There is increasing evidence that suggests that the alteration of lncRNAs in PBMCs could be used as a biomarker for diagnosis and disease monitoring in many chronic disorders [ 18 , 19 , 20 ]. Moreover, the transcriptomic analyses in PBMCs have revealed differential expression patterns between cancerous and non-cancerous samples in several types of malignant tumors, including HCC [ 21 , 22 , 23 ]. In this study, we demonstrated that DElncRNAs in PBMCs in the co-culture model could differentiate between HCC and non-HCC.…”

The high FKBP1A expression in WBCs as a potential screening biomarker for pancreatic cancer

“…At the mRNA level, FKBP1A gene expression in WBCs of pancreatic cancer patients was significantly higher than normal and showed satisfactory sensitivity (88.9%) and specificity (84.3%) with an AUC of 0.901. Multiple studies have postulated about the ability of cancer cells to produce cytokine and chemokine-like secretion molecules which affect gene expression changes in blood circulating immune cells, including WBCs, contributing to the progression of various forms of cancer and impacting outcomes 31 – 34 . Recent works have shown that the levels of mRNA and protein expression of PBMCs exhibited changes in both hepatocellular carcinoma and non-small cell lung cancer 27 , 35 .…”

LINC00886 Facilitates Hepatocellular Carcinoma Tumorigenesis by Sequestering microRNA-409-3p and microRNA-214-5p

“…Therefore, these experimental data demonstrated that LINC00886 facilitated the oncogenesis and progression of HCC. PBMCs, composed of immune cells, are characterized as a reflection of the body’s reaction to various diseases 34 and have been used as liquid biopsy to identify diagnostic or prognostic biomarkers for diverse malignancies, such as breast cancer, 35 pancreatic cancer, 36 and renal cell carcinoma. 37 Previous study has demonstrated that aberrantly expressed lncRNAs in PBMCs can distinguish HCC from non-HCC patients.…”