Expression of DNA Helicase Genes Was Correlated with Homologous Recombination Deficiency in Breast Cancer

Abstract

Homologous recombination deficiency which is currently measured by the homologous recombination deficiency (HRD) score including score of telomeric allelic imbalance (TAI), large-scale transition (LST), and loss of heterozygosity (LOH) is highly related with sensitivity to platinum-containing drug and PARP inhibitors. DNA helicases are essential components for the homologous recombination repair process in which DNA helicases unwind double-strand DNA utilizing ATP hydrolysis. In our study, the correlation between the expression of DNA helicase genes and HRD score in breast cancer was analyzed. The overexpression in half of the DNA helicase genes was found to be highly correlated with a high HRD score both in BRCA-mutated and BRCA wild-type breast cancer. Moreover, HRD score can be predicted by a linear function contributed by five DNA helicase genes. In conclusion, our study revealed a close relation between the overexpression of certain DNA helicase genes and the deficiency of homologous recombination repair in breast cancer.

AR Expression Correlates with Distinctive Clinicopathological and Genomic Features in Breast Cancer Regardless of ESR1 Expression Status

“…For breast cancer from TCGA [ 41 ], RNA-seq and clinical data of 1102 breast cancer samples were downloaded and processed using the TCGAbioloinks R/Bioconductor package (version 2.18.0) [ 42 ], as described in a series of our previous publications [ 43 , 44 , 45 , 46 ]. The Fragments Per Kilobase of transcript per Million mapped reads Upper Quartile (FPKM-UQ) RNA-seq data were log2-transformed before being further processed.…”