Age-Related Clusters and Favorable Immune Phenotypes in Young Breast Cancer Patients.

Breast cancer (BC) patients aged <40 years at diagnosis experience aggressive disease and poorer survival compared with women diagnosed with BC at 40 to 49 years, but the age-related biology is described to little extent. Here, we explored transcriptional alterations in BC to gain better understanding of age-related tumor biology. We studied a subset of the Bergen in-house cohort (n = 127; age range, 26-49 years) and used the NanoString Breast Cancer 360 expression panel on formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded BC tissue, and publicly available global BC messenger RNA expression data (n = 204; age range, 22-49 years), to explore differentially expressed genes between the young (age <40 years) and older (age 40-49 years) patients.