COPE is differentially expressed in the brain metastases of patients with metastatic 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 to discover genes associated with brain metastasis in patients with metastatic breast cancer. We found that the epsilon subunit of the coatomer protein complex, COPE, was among the genes whose expression was most different in the brain metastases of patients with metastatic breast cancer as compared to normal breast tissues. COPE mRNA was present at increased quantities in brain metastatic tissues as compared to primary tumors of the breast. Up-regulation of COPE expression may contribute to metastasis of tumor cells from the breast to the brain in humans with metastatic breast cancer.