AIDA is a differentially expressed gene in human brain 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 for the discovery of genes associated with brain metastasis in humans with metastatic breast cancer. We found that axin interactor, dorsalization associated, encoded by AIDA, was among the genes whose expression was most quantitatively different in the brain metastases of patients with metastatic breast cancer. AIDA mRNA was present at decreased quantities in brain metastatic tissues as compared to primary tumors of the breast. Importantly, expression of AIDA in primary tumors was significantly correlated with patient post-progression survival in patients with breast cancer. Modulation of AIDA expression may be relevant to the biology by which tumor cells metastasize from the breast to the brain.