miROMeS · miRNA biomarkers of Osseous Metastases in Serum from breast cancer patients

miRNA biomarkers of Osseous Metastases in Serum from breast cancer patients

Breast cancer is increasingly viewed as manageable for many years since patient survival rates have steadily increased, in which 82-88% of patients are expected to be alive after 5 years. However, bone metastasis is a common complication for breast cancer patients, the rate of bone metastasis still affecting over 70% of advanced-stage patients. This is a complicating factor for patient care, as patients may subsequently develop osteolytic fractures or spinal compression, leading to chronic pain. By the time breast cancer bone metastasis is diagnosed, the disease is considered incurable. Therefore it is a necessity to evaluate the predictive value of candidate biomarkers for bone metastasis in breast cancer patients to improve the detection of high-risk patients. Assessing biomarker prognosis value will also permit to adapt treatment for patients at risk of developing bone metastasis by given preventative treatments such as adjuvant bisphosphonates and/or new preventive therapies. This research emphasizes the importance of health and wellbeing where patient quality of life and patient relapse remains a challenge. Identification of patients at risk of bone metastasis development may lead to decreased drug burden, reducing bone-metastasis related fractures and the need for surgery, providing relief to the health care system. Further, in light of increased breast cancer survival, long-term disease management becomes an alternate health objective. Circulating breast tumor cells that escape the primary tumor and invade the bone marrow express sets of deregulated genes and microRNAs (miRNAs) that facilitate their bone tropism and enhance engraftment of disseminated tumor cell in bone marrow which may subsequently induce osteolytic lesions. Indeed, transcriptional profiling of primary tumors has revealed gene and miRNA signatures that correlate with metastatic bone relapse in patients. Insight into the molecular mechanisms of cancer cell dissemination to bone has been obtained through associations between miRNA expression in primary tumor and metastasis with the involvement of specifically cognate genes during bone metastasis formation. MiRNAs are short and single-stranded RNAs that repress gene expression and that have been suggested as biomarkers of bone disease, driven by their remarkable stability and accessibility in blood and by the property of circulating miRNAs as a reflect of tumor miRNAs. In this, the utility of miRNAs as biomarkers of bone disease has been studied in the present research that has combined the expertise from the ERS in miRNA biomarker analysis and the host laboratory’s expertise in bone metastasis for the following objectives: (i)- To identify genes and miRNAs in breast primary tumors the deregulation of which is associated to bone metastasis occurrence. (ii)- To identify serum miRNA signatures of bone metastasis in breast cancer patients with bone metastasis compared to patients without bone metastasis. (iii)- To evaluate the predictive value of candidate miRNA biomarkers in a focused miRNA panel using serum from patients with long-term follow-up data

Data: CORDIS, © European Union