Clinically relevant morphological structures as transcriptionally distinct tumor subpopulations and potential therapeutic targets in breast cancer

An abstract of the study of Denisov et al. about clinically relevant morphological structures as transcriptionally distinct tumor subpopulations and potential therapeutic targets in breast cancer is presented. Among other things breast cancer (BC) demonstrates significant intratumor morphological heterogeneity (IMH) represented by different morphological structures: tubular, alveolar, solid, trabecular, and discrete groups of tumor cells, which contribute to chemotherapy efficiency and lymphogenic metastasis. In this study, we validated the contribution of IMH to chemotherapy response and metastasis in the large group of BC patients and investigated phenotypic features of different morphological structures of breast tumors. Breast tumors with 3-5 types of structures more often demonstrated chemoresistance than cases with 1-2 types of structures. Alveolar and trabecular structures were found to be associated with poor response to NAC and decreased metastasis-free survival. Simultaneous calculation of alveolar and trabecular structures increased the prognostic value significantly. Different morphological structures in BC are represented by transcriptionally distinct tumor subpopulations with varied degree of sternness and invasive properties.