Correction: SNiPER: a novel hypermethylation biomarker panel for liquid biopsy based early breast cancer detection.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.18632/oncotarget.27303.

SNiPER: a novel hypermethylation biomarker panel for liquid biopsy based early breast cancer detection.

Introduction: Mammography is the gold standard for early breast cancer detection, but shows important limitations. Blood-based approaches on basis of cell-free DNA (cfDNA) provide minimally invasive screening tools to characterize epigenetic alterations of tumor suppressor genes and could serve as a liquid biopsy, complementing mammography.

Methods: Potential biomarkers were identified from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), using HumanMethylation450-BeadChip data.

Fat necrosis and parenchymal scarring after breast-conserving surgery and radiotherapy with an intraoperative electron or fractionated, percutaneous boost: a retrospective comparison.

Background: The aim of this retrospective analysis was to evaluate mammographic changes such as fat necroses and parenchymal scarring in the breast tissue within the first 3 years after breast-conserving surgery (BCS) and whole-breast irradiation with an additional intraoperative electron boost (IO-B) versus fractionated percutaneous boost (FP-B).

Methods: A total of 53 breast cancer patients (stage I/II) treated between 2006 and 2008 were included. All patients underwent BCS followed by fractionated whole-breast radiotherapy with a total dose and single dose of 50.

Mastectomy trends for early-stage breast cancer: a report from the EUSOMA multi-institutional European database.

Introduction: Recent single-institution reports have shown increased mastectomy rates during the last decade. Further studies aiming to determine if these reports could be reflecting a national trend in the United States of America (US) have shown conflicting results. We report these trends from a multi-institutional European database.

Wnt signalling in human breast cancer: expression of the putative Wnt inhibitor Dickkopf-3 (DKK3) is frequently suppressed by promoter hypermethylation in mammary tumours.

Introduction: Expression of the putative Wnt signalling inhibitor Dickkopf-3 (DKK3) is frequently lost in human cancer tissues because of aberrant 5'-cytosine methylation within the DKK3 gene promoter. Since other Wnt signalling inhibitors have been reported to be targets of epigenetic inactivation in human breast cancer, we questioned if DKK3 expression is also epigenetically silenced during breast carcinogenesis and therefore might contribute to oncogenic Wnt signalling commonly found in this disease.

Methods: DKK3 mRNA expression and DKK3 promoter methylation were determined by RT-PCR, realtime PCR and methylation-specific PCR in breast cell lines (n = 9), normal breast tissues (n = 19) and primary breast carcinomas (n = 150), respectively.

Frequent expression loss of Inter-alpha-trypsin inhibitor heavy chain (ITIH) genes in multiple human solid tumors: a systematic expression analysis.

Background: The inter-alpha-trypsin inhibitors (ITI) are a family of plasma protease inhibitors, assembled from a light chain - bikunin, encoded by AMBP - and five homologous heavy chains (encoded by ITIH1, ITIH2, ITIH3, ITIH4, and ITIH5), contributing to extracellular matrix stability by covalent linkage to hyaluronan. So far, ITIH molecules have been shown to play a particularly important role in inflammation and carcinogenesis.

Methods: We systematically investigated differential gene expression of the ITIH gene family, as well as AMBP and the interacting partner TNFAIP6 in 13 different human tumor entities (of breast, endometrium, ovary, cervix, stomach, small intestine, colon, rectum, lung, thyroid, prostate, kidney, and pancreas) using cDNA dot blot analysis (Cancer Profiling Array, CPA), semiquantitative RT-PCR and immunohistochemistry.

Epidemiology of Streptococcus agalactiae colonization in Germany.

Streptococcus agalactiae can cause severe pneumonia, sepsis and meningitis in neonates and remains one of the most prevalent causes of invasive neonatal infections. Maternal transmission of S. agalactiae during delivery can be prevented by prenatal screening and peripartal antibiotic prophylaxis.

Systematic characterisation of GABRP expression in sporadic breast cancer and normal breast tissue.

The GABRP gene has been previously identified by in silico analysis of four million ESTs as a candidate gene differentially expressed in breast cancer. GABRP is located on chromosome 5q34 and it encodes the pi-subunit of the gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) receptor, a transmembrane protein expressed in the brain and several nonneuronal tissues. Using cDNA dot blot hybridisation (cancer profiling array), quantitative RT-PCR and non-radioisotopic in situ hybridisation (ISH), we have analysed GABRP expression in breast cancer and normal breast tissues as well as in nontumorigenic and tumorigenic breast cell lines.