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Invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC) and invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC) are the two major histological types of breast cancer worldwide. Whereas IDC incidence has remained stable, ILC is the most rapidly increasing breast cancer phenotype in the United States and Western Europe. It is not clear whether IDC and ILC represent molecularly distinct entities and what genes might be involved in the development of these two phenotypes. We conducted comprehensive gene expression profiling studies to address these questions. Total RNA from 21 ILCs, 38 IDCs, two lymph node metastases, and three normal tissues were amplified and hybridized to approximately 42,000 clone cDNA microarrays. Data were analyzed using hierarchical clustering algorithms and statistical analyses that identify differentially expressed genes (significance analysis of microarrays) and minimal subsets of genes (prediction analysis for microarrays) that succinctly distinguish ILCs and IDCs. Eleven of 21 (52%) of the ILCs ("typical" ILCs) clustered together and displayed different gene expression profiles from IDCs, whereas the other ILCs ("ductal-like" ILCs) were distributed between different IDC subtypes. Many of the differentially expressed genes between ILCs and IDCs code for proteins involved in cell adhesion/motility, lipid/fatty acid transport and metabolism, immune/defense response, and electron transport. Many genes that distinguish typical and ductal-like ILCs are involved in regulation of cell growth and immune response. Our data strongly suggest that over half the ILCs differ from IDCs not only in histological and clinical features but also in global transcription programs. The remaining ILCs closely resemble IDCs in their transcription patterns. Further studies are needed to explore the differences between ILC molecular subtypes and to determine whether they require different therapeutic strategies.
Zhao et al. (Mon,) studied this question.