Background/objectives: Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are known to play key roles in breast cancers; however, detailed mechanistic studies of lncRNA function have not been conducted in large cohorts of breast cancer tumors, nor has inter-donor and inter-subtype variability been taken into consideration for these analyses. Here we provide the first identification and annotation of the human BORG lncRNA gene.
Methods/results: Using multiple tumor cohorts of human breast cancers, we show that while BORG expression is strongly induced in breast tumors as compared to normal breast tissues, the extent of BORG induction varies widely between breast cancer subtypes and even between different tumors within the same subtype. Elevated levels of BORG in breast tumors are associated with the acquisition of core cancer aggression pathways, including those associated with basal tumor and pluripotency phenotypes and with epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) programs. While a subset of BORG-associated pathways was present in high BORG-expressing tumors across all breast cancer subtypes, many were specific to tumors categorized as triple-negative breast cancers. Finally, we show that genes induced by heterologous expression of BORG in murine models of TNBC both in vitro and in vivo strongly overlap with those associated with high BORG expression levels in human TNBC tumors.
Conclusion: Our findings implicate human BORG as a novel driver of the highly aggressive basal TNBC tumor phenotype.
Keywords: BORG; TNBC; cancer stem cells; lncRNAs.