Figure 6.
AXL MaSC Regulation Is Associated with Breast Cancer
(A) Volcano plot of significance versus fold gene expression change between the FDGhigh populations from Axl+/LacZ and AxlLacZ/LacZ adult mouse mammary epithelial cells. The most highly differentially expressed genes (cutoff: 1.5-fold change) are shaded.
(B) The Metabric breast cancer patient cohort (n = 1,980 patients) (Curtis et al., 2012) was interrogated with the AXL MaSC gene signature (AXL-stem, Table S1) to access the distribution correlated with the degree of basal-like gene expression in breast cancer (ρ = 0.181, p = 5.5 × 10-16).
(C) The Metabric breast cancer patient cohort (n = 1,980) (Curtis et al., 2012) was interrogated with the AXL MaSC gene expression signature (AXL-stem, Table S1) to assess the influence of the AXL stem gene expression signature on clinical endpoints. AXL-stem score was significantly elevated in the core basal subtype of integrative cluster 10 (IC10) subtyped tumors from the Metabric breast cancer patient cohort (n = 1,980) (Curtis et al., 2012) (p = 5.2 × 10-33, Kruskal-Wallis rank test).
(D) AXL-stem score was associated with breast cancer-specific outcome in a univariate model, stratified for hospital (p = 0.00496; hazard ratio: 1.026) and in a multivariate model correcting for grade and lymph node status (p = 0.00899; hazard ratio: 1.024, Cox proportional hazards regression, Breitling et al., 2004).