Need Help?

CPTAC: Molecular Dissection of Chemotherapy Response in Triple Negative Breast Cancer

Sporadic Triple Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC) represents 10-15% of breast cancers (BC) worldwide. Non-specific chemotherapy remains the standard of care as there are no targeted agents. In 50% of cases, pathological complete response (pCR) is not achieved, and these individuals experience poor survival. Predictive markers for chemotherapy have proved elusive, and patients can receive up to five different chemotherapy agents to optimize outcomes. Microscaled proteogenomics (PMID: 31988290) is a discovery technique that integrates DNA and RNA sequencing with mass spectrometry based proteomics. This approach was applied to snap-frozen biopsies obtained before TNBC treatment on a clinical trial of carboplatin and docetaxel. Proteogenomic profiling included whole exome sequencing (WES), RNA-seq, and tandem mass tag based proteomics and phosphoproteomics.

The study was approved by the IRB at both participating sites: Washington University in St. Louis and Baylor College of Medicine (BCM), and followed the Declaration of Helsinki and Good Clinical Practice guidelines. The protocol and informed consent documents were approved by Washington University School of Medicine (WUSM) and BCM.