Poster Presentation HUPO 2019 - 18th Human Proteome Organization World Congress

Proteogenomic study of vitronectin in breast cancer (#853)

Alakesh Bera 1 , Madhan Subramanian 1 , Michael Eklund 1 , John Karaian 1 , Harvey B Pollard 1 , Hai Hu 2 , Craig D Shriver 3 , Meera Srivastava 1
  1. USU School of Medicine, Bethesda, MARYLAND, United States
  2. Chan Soon-Shiong Institute of Molecular Medicine, Windber, Philadelphia, United states
  3. Murtha Cancer Center, Uniformed Services University/Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland, United States

Breast Cancer is the most common form of cancer in women worldwide, impacting nearly 2.1 million women each year. In 2018, nearly 627,000 women died of breast cancer, which accounts for 15% of all cancer deaths. Identification of new biomarkers could be key for early diagnosis and therefore, increase the survival.  Vitronectin, a glycoprotein that is abundantly found in serum, extracellular matrix, and bone, binds to integrin alpha V beta 3, and promotes cell adhesion and migration. Current studies indicate that patients with amplified Vitronectin copy-number have lower survival rates than patients without amplified Vitronectin. In this study, we focused on the role of vitronectin in breast cancer survival and its functional role as a non-invasive biomarker for early stage and stage specific breast cancer detection. To confirm that the expression of vitronectin is amplified in breast cancer, a total of 240 serum samples (n=240) from breast cancer patients were analyzed using the Reverse Phase Protein Array (RPPA) technique. Of the 240 samples, 120 samples were of African American descent, while the other 120 were of Caucasian American descent. Initial analysis of this data revealed that there were significant racial disparities in vitronectin expression level, specifically seen in the recurrent samples. Next, we tried to uncover the underling mechanism which plays critical role in Vitronectin expression. We analyzed the different protein markers in four breast cancer cell lines MCF7, MB231, MB468, and HCC1599.  The data indicated that the PI3K/AKT axis is modulating the expression of vitronectin and associated survival rate in breast cancer.