Abstract P1-02-08: Provista-002: A prospective, multi-center study to determine the effectiveness of a biomarker assay to distinguish benign from invasive breast cancer in women with BI-RADS 3, 4 and 5 imaging reports

This abstract was not presented at the symposium.

Abstract P2-11-05: Overall survival in inflammatory breast cancer patients receiving Her-2 Neu directed tumor vaccine therapy: Matched comparison with SEER registry patients

Background

Patients with inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) have a poor prognosis, primarily due to distant dissemination. Additionally, IBC patients have an increased rate of HER2 overexpression when compared to patients with non-inflammatory breast cancer. The forms the rationale for HER2 directed tumor vaccine therapy in these patients. The purpose of this study was to examine overall survival in IBC patients receiving HER2 directed tumor vaccine therapy when compared with matched control patients from the SEER Registry.

Methods

Patients with diagnosis of Stage III or IV HER2 positive IBC having completed standard initial therapy and without evidence of disease received HER2 vaccinations after being enrolled on 5 prospective clinical trials. Overall survival data were pooled and analyzed. A control group of matched IBC patients were identified by querying the SEER database from 1997-2011. The control group was identified as any individual in the database with a code for IBC. A secondary analysis comparing survival in HER2 positive IBC vs HER2 negative IBC patients was performed by querying the SEER database from 2010 onwards, the time point when the HER2 status was coded in the database. Propensity score adjustment were made to the control group to account for any imbalances between groups in measured covariates such as stage, race, age, sex, and era of enrollment and the time interval from diagnosis to enrollment on vaccine trial (median ∼2 years).

Results

A total of 37 IBC patients received HER2 directed vaccine therapy and 676 patients were identified for the SEER control group; Stage at enrollment: stage IIIB: 30 patients in the vaccine group and 639 patients in the control group; stage IIIC: 1 patient in the vaccine group and 15 patients in the control group; stage IV 6 patients in the vaccine group and 22 in the control group. The median survival of the overall population was 112 months for the vaccine group and 47 months for the control group (p=0.04). After using propensity scores to adjust the control for imbalances in measured covariates, the median survival for the overall population was 112 months for the vaccine group and 37 months for the control group (p=0.03). There was no difference in survival between HER2 positive and HER2 negative IBC patients in the control group (p=0.6).

Conclusion

These results demonstrate promising overall survival in HER2 positive IBC patients receiving HER2 directed vaccine therapy after initial therapy. Propensity matching was performed to adjust for imbalances in measured covariates and resulted in a modest decrease in survival of the control group after adjustment, suggesting that the vaccine trial group had relatively unfavorable pre-treatment characteristics. Despite these unfavorable characteristics, patients receiving vaccine had a median survival of 112 months. These results must be further confirmed in a prospective randomized trial.

Citation Format: Rengan R, Baker K, Salazar L, Childs J, Higgins D, Redman M, Reichow J, Disis ML. Overall survival in inflammatory breast cancer patients receiving Her-2 Neu directed tumor vaccine therapy: Matched comparison with SEER registry patients. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Thirty-Eighth Annual CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium: 2015 Dec 8-12; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2016;76(4 Suppl):Abstract nr P2-11-05.

Nonlinear forecasting of intertidal shoreface evolution

Natural systems dominated by sediment transport are notoriously difficult to forecast. This is particularly true along the ocean coastline, a region that draws considerable human attention as economic investment and infrastructure are threatened by both persistent, long-term and acute, event driven processes (i.e., sea level rise and storm damage, respectively). Forecasting the coastline's evolution over intermediate time (daily) and space (tens of meters) scales is hindered by the complexity of sediment transport and hydrodynamics, and limited access to the detailed local forcing that drives fast scale processes. Modern remote sensing systems provide an efficient, economical means to collect data within these regions. A solar-powered digital camera installation is used to capture the coast's evolution, and machine learning algorithms are implemented to extract the shoreline and estimate the daily mean intertidal coastal profile. Methods in nonlinear time series forecasting and genetic programming applied to these data corroborate that coastal morphology at these scales is predominately driven by nonlinear internal dynamics, which partially mask external forcing signatures. Results indicate that these forecasting techniques achieve nontrivial predictive skill for spatiotemporal forecast of the upper coastline profile (as much as 43% of variance in data explained for one day predictions). This analysis provides evidence that societally relevant coastline forecasts can be achieved without knowing the forcing environment or the underlying dynamical equations that govern coastline evolution.

Amphetamine sensitization in mice is sufficient to produce both manic- and depressive-related behaviors as well as changes in the functional connectivity of corticolimbic structures

It has been suggested that amphetamine abuse and withdrawal mimics the diverse nature of bipolar disorder symptomatology in humans. Here, we determined if a single paradigm of amphetamine sensitization would be sufficient to produce both manic- and depressive-related behaviors in mice. CD-1 mice were subcutaneously dosed for 5 days with 1.8 mg/kg d-amphetamine or vehicle. On days 6-31 of withdrawal, amphetamine-sensitized (AS) mice were compared to vehicle-treated (VT) mice on a range of behavioral and biochemical endpoints. AS mice demonstrated reliable mania- and depression-related behaviors from day 7 to day 28 of withdrawal. Relative to VT mice, AS mice exhibited long-lasting mania-like hyperactivity following either an acute 30-min restraint stress or a low-dose 1 mg/kg d-amphetamine challenge, which was attenuated by the mood-stabilizers lithium and quetiapine. In absence of any challenge, AS mice showed anhedonia-like decreases in sucrose preference and depression-like impairments in the off-line consolidation of motor memory, as reflected by the lack of spontaneous improvement across days of training on the rotarod. AS mice also demonstrated a functional impairment in nest building, an ethologically-relevant activity of daily living. Western blot analyses revealed a significant increase in methylation of histone 3 at lysine 9 (H3K9), but not lysine 4 (H3K4), in hippocampus of AS mice relative to VT mice. In situ hybridization for the immediate-early gene activity-regulated cytoskeleton-associated protein (Arc) further revealed heightened activation of corticolimbic structures, decreased functional connectivity between frontal cortex and striatum, and increased functional connectivity between the amygdala and hippocampus of AS mice. The effects of amphetamine sensitization were blunted in C57BL/6J mice relative to CD-1 mice. These results show that a single amphetamine sensitization protocol is sufficient to produce behavioral, functional, and biochemical phenotypes in mice that are relevant to bipolar disorder.

Spectral encoding method for measuring the relative arrival time between x-ray/optical pulses

The advent of few femtosecond x-ray light sources brings promise of x-ray/optical pump-probe experiments that can measure chemical and structural changes in the 10-100 fs time regime. Widely distributed timing systems used at x-ray Free-Electron Laser facilities are typically limited to above 50 fs fwhm jitter in active x-ray/optical synchronization. The approach of single-shot timing measurements is used to sort results in the event processing stage. This has seen wide use to accommodate the insufficient precision of active stabilization schemes. In this article, we review the current technique for "measure-and-sort" at the Linac Coherent Light Source at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. The relative arrival time between an x-ray pulse and an optical pulse is measured near the experimental interaction region as a spectrally encoded cross-correlation signal. The cross-correlation provides a time-stamp for filter-and-sort algorithms used for real-time sorting. Sub-10 fs rms resolution is common in this technique, placing timing precision at the same scale as the duration of the shortest achievable x-ray pulses.

Alteration of select gene expression patterns in individuals infected with HIV-1

Multiple human proteins have been shown to both support and restrict viral replication, and confirmation of virus-associated changes in the expression of these genes is relevant for future therapeutic efforts. In this study a well-characterized panel of 49 individuals either infected with HIV-1 or uninfected was compiled and analyzed for the effect of HIV infection status, viral load, and antiretroviral treatment on specific gene expression. mRNA was extracted and reverse transcribed from purified CD4+ cells, and quantitative real-time PCR was utilized to scrutinize differences in the expression of four host genes that have been demonstrated to either stimulate (HSP90 and LEDGF/p75) or restrict (p21/WAF1 and APOBEC3G) proviral integration. HIV infection status was associated with slight to moderate alterations in the expression of all four genes. After adjusting for age, mRNA expression levels of HSP90, LEDGF/p75 and APOBEC3G were found to all be decreased in infected patients compared to healthy controls by 1.43-, 1.26-, and 4.71-fold, respectively, while p21/WAF1 expression was increased 2.35-fold. Furthermore, individuals receiving raltegravir exhibited a 1.28-fold reduction in LEDGF/p75 compared to those on non-raltegravir antiretroviral treatment. Identification of these and similar HIV-induced changes in gene expression may be valuable for delineating the extent of host cell molecular mechanisms stimulating viral replication.

Abstract P1-04-06: Insertional mutagenesis identifies HACE1 as a HER2/Neu Cooperating Breast Cancer Tumor Suppressor Gene

The development of human breast cancer is a multi-step process leading from normal epithelium to fully transformed breast cancer. Early genetic changes result in hyperplasias which evolves into ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) and culminates as invasive ductal carcinoma. The transition from DCIS to invasive disease has been implicated as the key transition in breast cancer progression. Specific genomic, transcriptomic, and proteomic alterations responsible for this transition process have yet to been elucidated.

HER2/Neu, a member of the EGFR family of receptor tyrosine kinases, is associated with poor clinical outcome. HER2/Neu overexpression/amplification is commonly seen (50–60%) in non-invasive lesions but is significantly less common (20–30%) in invasive and metastatic breast carcinoma. This indicates that HER2/Neu gives normal epithelium a proliferative advantage but additional genetic alterations are required for full malignant transformation. This idea is supported by the fact that transgenic mice that overexpress HER2/Neu develop spontaneous mammary tumors but only after a prolonged latency period.

Recent forward genetic approaches use insertional mutagenesis to randomly integrate a strong promoter into the genome, activating downstream gene transcription that can lead to either gain or loss-of-function mutations based on the integration site. We used this insertional mutagenesis approach to induce anchorage-independent growth of isolated murine HER2/Neu over-expressing mammary epithelial cells. We identified HECT domain and ankyrin repeat containing E3 ubiquitin protein ligase 1 (HACE1) as a putative breast tumor suppressor protein whose loss leads to the formation of anchorage-independent colonies.

Loss of HACE1 expression is commonly seen in breast cancer patients [as well as other tumor types] supporting the role of HACE1 as a breast tumor suppressor gene. Knockdown of HACE1 in human mammary epithelial cells (HMECs) results in the acquisition of anchorage-independent growth. Moreover, knockdown of HACE1 in established breast cancer cell lines that express moderate levels of HACE1 results in enhanced cloniginicity.

Therefore, we propose that the loss of HACE1 can potentially be used as a predictive marker for breast cancer progression. Additional studies investigating the mechanism of HACE1 action may also identify therapeutic targets that counteract HACE1 loss.

Citation Information: Cancer Res 2012;72(24 Suppl):Abstract nr P1-04-06.