ZNF367 is differentially expressed in metastasis to lymph nodes in human breast cancer.
Metastasis to the brain is a clinical problem in patients with breast cancer (1-3). Between the brain and the breast resides the secondary lymphoid organ, the lymph nodes. We mined published microarray data (4, 5) to compare primary and metastatic tumor transcriptomes for the discovery of genes associated with metastasis to the lymph nodes in human breast cancer. We found that the zinc finger protein 367, encoded by ZNF367, was among the genes whose expression was most different in the lymph nodes metastases of patients with metastatic breast cancer as compared to primary tumors of the breast4. ZNF367 was also differentially expressed in the tumor cells of patients with triple negative breast cancer5. ZNF367 mRNA was present at increased quantities in lymph node metastatic tissues as compared to primary tumors of the breast. Importantly, expression of ZNF367 in primary tumors was significantly correlated with patient distant metastasis-free survival, in lymph node negative but not in lymph node positive breast cancer. Modulation of ZNF367 expression may be relevant to the biology by which tumor cells metastasize from the breast to the brain in humans with metastatic breast cancer.