Patients diagnosed with basal-like breast cancer face a more aggressive disease course and more dismal prognosis than patients diagnosed with luminal A and luminal B breast cancer molecular subtypes (1-4). We mined published microarray data (5, 6) to understand in an unbiased fashion the most distinguishing transcriptional features of tumors from patients with basal or basal-like subtype breast cancer. We observed transcriptome-wide differential expression of integrin subunit beta 4, ITGB4,

more »

... comparing tumors of patients with basal-like breast cancer with that of other PAM50 molecular subtypes. ITGB4 mRNA was present at significantly higher quantities in the tumors of patients with basal-like breast cancer. Analysis of patient survival data revealed that ITGB4 primary tumor expression was correlated with distant metastasis-free survival in normal-like subtype breast cancer. Elevated ITGB4 expression appears to distinguish basal-like human breast cancer from the other molecular subtypes.