The peptidase inhibitor 16, PI16, 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 peptidase inhibitor PI16, encoded by PI16, was among the genes whose expression was most different in the brain metastatic tumor tissues of patients with metastatic breast cancer. PI16 messenger RNA was present in significantly decreased quantities in metastasis to the brain when compared to normal breast tissues. PI16 was also differentially expressed in primary tumors of the breast when compared to normal breast tissues. Down-regulation of PI16 may be important for metastasis of primary tumor-derived cancer cells to the brain in humans with metastatic breast cancer.