Heterogeneity of genomic profile in patients with HER2-positive breast cancer

Abstract

HER2-positive breast cancer is a biologically and clinically heterogeneous disease. Based on the expression of hormone receptors (HR), breast tumors can be further categorized into HR positive and HR negative. Here, we elucidated the comprehensive somatic mutation profile of HR+ and HR− HER2-positive breast tumors to understand their molecular heterogeneity. In this study, 64 HR+/HER2+ and 43 HR-/HER2+ stage I-III breast cancer patients were included. Capture-based targeted sequencing was performed using a panel consisting of 520 cancer-related genes, spanning 1.64 megabases of the human genome. A total of 1119 mutations were detected among the 107 HER2-positive patients. TP53, CDK12 and PIK3CA were the most frequently mutated, with mutation rates of 76, 61 and 49, respectively. HR+/HER2+ tumors had more gene amplification, splice site and frameshift mutations and a smaller number of missense, nonsense and insertion-deletion mutations than HR-/HER2+ tumors. In KEGG analysis, HR+/HER2+ tumors had more mutations in genes involved in homologous recombination (P = 0.004), TGF-beta (P = 0.007) and WNT (P = 0.002) signaling pathways than HR-/HER2+ tumors. Moreover, comparative analysis of our cohort with datasets from The Cancer Genome Atlas and Molecular Taxonomy of Breast Cancer International Consortium revealed the distinct somatic mutation profile of Chinese HER2-positive breast cancer patients. Our study revealed the heterogeneity of somatic mutations between HR+/HER2+ and HR-/HER2+ in Chinese breast cancer patients. The distinct mutation profile and related pathways are potentially relevant in the development of optimal treatment strategies for this subset of patients.