Differential expression of RUN and SH3 domain containing 1 (RUSC1) in cancers of the breast.
Breast cancer affects women at relatively high frequency (1). We mined published microarray datasets (2, 3) to determine in an unbiased fashion and at the systems level genes most differentially expressed in the primary tumors of patients with breast cancer. We report here significant differential expression of the gene encoding RUN and SH3 domain containing 1, RUSC1, when comparing primary tumors of the breast to the tissue of origin, the normal breast. RUSC1 mRNA was present at significantly higher quantities in tumors of the breast as compared to normal breast tissue. Further interrogation revealed that a RUSC1 antisense transcript, RUSC1-AS1, was differentially expressed at the transcriptome level in a separate dataset. Analysis of human survival data revealed that expression of RUSC1 in primary tumors of the breast was correlated with overall survival in patients with luminal B type cancer. RUSC1 may be of relevance to initiation, maintenance or progression of cancers of the female breast.