Differential expression of fibronectin 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 fibronectin, encoded by FN1, when comparing primary tumors of the breast to the tissue of origin, the normal breast. FN1 expression in primary tumors of the breast was significantly higher than in normal breast tissue, and distant metastasis-free survival in breast cancer patients was significantly worse in patients with high tumor expression of FN1 than in patients with low tumor expression of FN1. FN1 may be of relevance to initiation, maintenance or progression of cancers of the female breast.