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Originally published as Ann Surg Oncol Early Release 10.1245/ASO.2004.03.049 on May 18, 2004

Annals of Surgical Oncology 11:560-567 (2004)
© 2004 Society of Surgical Oncology
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ORIGINAL ARTICLES

DNA Fingerprints Provide a Patient-Specific Breast Cancer Marker

SuEllen Toth-Fejel, PhD, Patrick Muller, BS, Bruce Ham, MD, Kevin Esvelt, Nicole Dumas, Kristine Calhoun, MD and Rodney Pommier, MD

From the Division of Surgical Oncology, Department of General Surgery, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, Oregon.

Correspondence: Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Rodney Pommier, MD, Division of Surgical Oncology, 3181 S. W. Sam Jackson Park Road, Mail Code L223A, Portland, Oregon; Fax: 503-494-7573; e-mail: pommierr{at}ohsu.edu

Background: Detection of systemic breast cancer recurrence is limited by lack of universally expressed tumor cell markers. We hypothesized that a test that detects genetic alterations specific to breast cancer cells of an individual patient would provide a superior cancer marker.

Methods: DNA was extracted from blood, primary tumor, and axillary lymph nodes of 33 breast cancer patients and normal breast tissue of 12 control patients. A patient’s genome was scanned by PCR amplification between Alu sequences. A DNA fingerprint of approximately 17–40 bands was produced for comparison between normal blood and sampled tissues.

Results: There were 7 stage I, 18 stage II, 7 stage III, and 1 stage IV breast cancer cases; 33 of 33 cancer cases showed DNA fingerprint differences between blood and primary tumor (P < .0001).This test predicted 100% of positive nodes. No false-negatives occurred, and in two cases malignancy was detected in histologically negative nodes. Three of the 12 controls showed a single similar band change.

Conclusions: DNA fingerprinting is a method for detecting and characterizing genetic alterations specific to an individual patient’s primary tumor in 100% of cases tested. These specific changes were also identified in 100% of positive nodes, proving the capacity of the test to detect metastases.

Key Words: Alu-PCR • Breast cancer • DNA fingerprinting • Tumor markers






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