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Research Paper
Lack of HIN-1 Methylation Defines Specific Breast Tumor Subtypes Including Medullary Carcinoma of the Breast and BRCA1-Linked Tumors
Pascaline Tisserand, Coralie Fouquet, Michel Barrois, Catherine Gallou, Rémi Dendale, Dominique Stoppa-Lyonnet, Xavier Sastre-Garau, Alain Fourquet and Thierry Soussi
volume 2 | issue 5
sept/oct 2003Pages: 559-563
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Medullary carcinoma is a poorly differentiated breast cancer with a high histologic grade and a paradoxically good prognosis. It accounts for only 3% of all breast cancers except in BRCA-1 families, in which it can account for as many as 13% of cancers. To date, only histologic criteria have been used to define this tumor type. In an attempt to more clearly define the genetic pathway leading to this subtype of cancer, we recently demonstrated that nearly 100% of these carcinomas display p53 mutations. In the present study, we extended our analysis to include HIN-1, a candidate tumor suppressor that has been shown to be silenced by methylation in the majority of breast tumors. In striking contrast to unselected sporadic invasive ductal carcinoma, we show that medullary carcinomas do not display a high frequency of HIN-1 methylation (p<0.001). This feature is also found in BRCA-1 associated tumors that shared several histologic characteristics with medullary carcinomas of the breast. Medullary carcinoma of the breast should therefore be considered to be a unique entity defined by specific histologic and molecular traits.
We now provide open access to journal articles published online for one year or more. This article may be downloaded at the following link:
Download PDFIf the document does not open, please right-click on the link (control-click on a Macintosh) and select the option to save the file to disk.