Plasma and tissue proteomic prognostic factors of response in primary breast cancer patients receiving neoadjuvant chemotherapy

A pathological complete response (pCR) after neoadjuvant chemotherapy is observed in approximately 20% of breast cancer patients. A proteomic analysis was performed on plasma and tumor tissue before treatment to evaluate its potential impact on the prediction of response. One hundred and forty-nine breast cancer patients eligible for neoadjuvant chemotherapy were included in the study between February 2004 and January 2009 at three centers. The proteomic analysis was performed using SELDI Technology (ProteinChip CM10 pH4, IMAC-Cu and H50). Three acquisition protocols were used according to the mass range. Plasma and tumor proteomic signatures were generated using generalized ROC criteria and cross-validation. Twenty-eight (18.8%) patients out of 149 experienced a pCR according to Sataloff criteria. In the cytosol analysis, respectively 4, 2 and 8 proteins had significantly different levels of expression in the responders and non-responders using IMAC-Cu, H50 and CM10 pH4. Among the 8 proteins of interest on CM10 pH4, 2 (C1 and C7) were selected and were validated in 95.0 and 85.6% of the models. In the plasma analysis, respectively 12, 6 and 2 proteins had different levels of expression using the same ProteinChips. Among the 12 plasma proteins of interest on IMAC-Cu, 2 (P1 and P7) were selected and were validated in 94.8 and 97.6% of the models. A combined proteomic signature was generated, which remained statistically significant when adjusted for hormone receptor status and Ki-67. Our results show that proteomic analysis can differentiate complete pathological responders in breast cancer patients after neoadjuvant chemotherapy.