HIST1H2BL 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 histone cluster 1, H2bl, encoded by HIST1H2BL, 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 and primary tumors of the breast. HIST1H2BL mRNA was present at increased quantities in brain metastatic tissues as compared to primary tumors of the breast and to normal breast tissues. Up-regulation of HIST1H2BL expression may be relevant to the biology by which tumor cells metastasize from the breast to the brain in humans with metastatic breast cancer.