Gene expression profiling of giant fibroadenomas of the breast

INTRODUCTION: Fibroadenomas of the breast present as two phenotypic variants. The usual variety is 5 cm or less in diameter and there is another large variant called giant fibroadenoma which is greater than 5 cm in diameter. Despite of its large size, it is not malignant. The aim of our study is to determine whether this large variant is different from the usual fibroadenoma in terms of its biological pathways and biomarkers.

METHODS: mRNA was extracted from 44 fibroadenomas and 36 giant fibroadenomas, and transcriptomic profiling was performed to identify up- and down-regulated genes in the giant fibroadenomas as compared to the fibroadenomas.

RESULTS: A total of 40 genes were significantly up-regulated and 18 genes were significantly down-regulated in the giant fibroadenomas as compared to the fibroadenomas of the breast. The top 5 up-regulated genes were FN1, IL3, CDC6, FGF8 and BMP8A. The top 5 down-regulated genes were TNR, CDKN2A, COL5A1, THBS4 and BMPR1B. The differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were found to be associated with 5 major canonical pathways involved in cell growth (PI3K-AKT, cell cycle regulation, WNT, and RAS signalling) and immune response (JAK-STAT signalling). Further analyses using 3 supervised learning algorithms identified an 8-gene signature (FN1, CDC6, IL23A, CCNA1, MCM4, FLT1, FGF22 and COL5A1) that could distinguish giant fibroadenomas from fibroadenomas with high predictive accuracy.

CONCLUSION: Our findings demonstrated that the giant fibroadenomas are biologically distinct to fibroadenomas of the breast with overexpression of genes involved in the regulation of cell growth and immune response.