MicroRNA signatures highlight new breast cancer subtypes

•We showed that microRNAs have unique signatures that distinguish breast cancer subtypes.•It is also found that new breast cancer subtypes, other than the four known, might exist.•We identified microRNA biomarkers specific to breast cancer subtypes.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a kind of short non-coding RNAs, of about 22 nucleotides in length, which modulate and sometimes degrade the target mRNAs thereby regulating a number of cellular functions. Recent research in this area establishes the involvement of miRNAs in various disease progressions, including certain types of cancer development. Further, genome-wide expression profiling of miRNAs has been proven to be useful for differentiating various cancer types. In this paper, we have used miRNA expression profiles over a large set of breast cancer tumor samples for identifying subtypes of breast cancers. The experimental results demonstrate that miRNAs carry a unique signature that distinguishes cancer subtypes and reveal new cancer subtypes. Additional survival analyses based on clinical data also strengthen this claim.

Graphical abstractDownload high-res image (73KB)Download full-size image