TMA16 is a differentially expressed gene in brain metastatic human breast cancer.
Metastasis to the brain is a clinical problem in patients with breast cancer (1-3). We mined published microarray data (4, 5) to compare primary and metastatic tumor transcriptomes for the discovery of genes associated with brain metastasis in humans with metastatic breast cancer. We found that translation machinery-associated protein 16, encoded by TMA16, was among the genes whose expression was most different in the brain metastases of patients with metastatic breast cancer as compared to primary tumors of the breast. TMA16 mRNA was present at decreased quantities in brain metastatic tissues as compared to primary tumors of the breast. Importantly, expression of TMA16 in primary tumors was correlated with patient post-progression survival. Modulation of TMA16 expression may be relevant to the biology by which tumor cells metastasize from the breast to the brain in humans with metastatic breast cancer.