Molecular and Genetic Predictors of Breast-to-Brain Metastasis: Review and Case Presentation

Brain metastases are the most common intracranial malignancy, and breast cancer is the second most common cancer to metastasize to the brain. Intracranial disease is a late manifestation of breast cancer with few effective treatment options, affecting 15-50% of breast cancer patients, depending upon molecular subtype. In this review article, we describe the genetic, molecular, and metabolic changes in breast cancer cells that facilitate breast to brain metastasis. We believe that advances in the understanding of breast to brain metastasis pathogenesis will lead to targeted molecular therapies and to improvements in the ability to prospectively identify patients at increased risk for developing intracranial disease.

• Publication year

  2015

• Venue

  Cureus

• Publication date

  2015-01-01

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.7759/cureus.246PMID 26180670PMCID 4494590
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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