DR-241 OPTN expression in Triple negative breast cancer

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is the most challenging breast cancer subtype to treat due to its aggressive characteristics and low response to the existing clinical therapies. Moreover, TNBC is a heterogenous subgroup within breast cancer, but the critical determinants why some TNBC patients demonstrate metastasis and others not, are not well understood. We uncovered that the protein optineurin (OPTN) plays an unexpected role in TNBC during metastasis. OPTN suppresses TNBC metastasis in experimental models. Data mining of publicly available data bases revealed that the OPTN levels in TNBC patients positively correlates with relapse free and distance free survival. We want to validate and extend these findings in independent TNBC patient cohorts. In particular we are interested to find out if OPTN expression levels (high expression or lack thereof) marks a specific subset of TNBC patients.

Peter ten Dijke, Leiden University Medical Center, The Netherlands