Women diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer can benefit neither from endocrine therapy nor from HER2-targeted therapies (1). We mined published microarray datasets (2, 3) to determine in an unbiased fashion and at the systems level genes most differentially expressed in the primary tumors of patients with breast cancer. We report here significant differential expression of the gene encoding abnormal spindle microtubule assembly, ASPM, when comparing the tumor cells of patients with

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... negative breast cancer to normal mammary ductal cells (2). ASPM was also differentially expressed in bulk tumor in human breast cancer (3). ASPM mRNA was present at significantly increased quantities in TNBC tumor cells relative to normal mammary ductal cells. Analysis of human survival data revealed that expression of ASPM in primary tumors of the breast was correlated with recurrence-free survival in patients with basal-like and luminal A type cancer, while within triple negative breast cancer, primary tumor expression of ASPM was correlated with overall survival in patients with basal-like 1 subtype disease. ASPM may be of relevance to initiation, maintenance or progression of triple negative breast cancers.