Published in

Nature Research, npj Breast Cancer, 1(7), 2021

DOI: 10.1038/s41523-021-00320-x

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Proteomics-derived basal biomarker DNA-PKcs is associated with intrinsic subtype and long-term clinical outcomes in breast cancer

This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

AbstractPrecise biomarkers are needed to guide better diagnostics and therapeutics for basal-like breast cancer, for which DNA-dependent protein kinase catalytic subunit (DNA-PKcs) has been recently reported by the Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium as the most specific biomarker. We evaluated DNA-PKcs expression in clinically-annotated breast cancer tissue microarrays and correlated results with immune biomarkers (training set:n = 300; validation set:n = 2401). Following a pre-specified study design per REMARK criteria, we found that high expression of DNA-PKcs was significantly associated with stromal and CD8 + tumor infiltrating lymphocytes. Within the basal-like subtype, tumors with low DNA-PKcs and high tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes displayed the most favourable survival. DNA-PKcs expression by immunohistochemistry identified estrogen receptor-positive cases with a basal-like gene expression subtype. Non-silent mutations inPRKDCwere significantly associated with poor outcomes. Integrating DNA-PKcs expression with validated immune biomarkers could guide patient selection for DNA-PKcs targeting strategies, DNA-damaging agents, and their combination with an immune-checkpoint blockade.