# Molecular portraits of human breast tumours

Source: https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-perou-molecular-portraits-breast-tumours-nature-2000/  
OnCo record `paper-perou-molecular-portraits-breast-tumours-nature-2000` (Key paper). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

The 2000 study that read the activity of 8,102 genes in 65 breast tumours and found the tumours fell into distinct groups, one of them the basal-like group that most triple-negative cancers belong to.

## Summary

Perou, Sørlie, Eisen, van de Rijn and colleagues characterised gene expression in 65 surgical specimens from 42 individuals using complementary DNA microarrays representing 8,102 human genes. Each tumour had a distinctive molecular portrait; 20 tumours sampled before and after 16 weeks of doxorubicin, and two paired with a lymph node metastasis, showed that two samples from the same person were almost always more alike than either was to any other tumour. Sets of co-expressed genes tracked specific features of the tumours, and the tumours could be classified into subtypes distinguished by pervasive differences in expression.

## Fields

- Kind: Key paper
- Last checked: 2026-09-24
- Tags: tnbc-evidence
- Journal: Nature
- Year: 2000
- DOI: 10.1038/35021093
- Authors: Perou CM, Sørlie T, Eisen MB, et al.
- Findings: 65 tumours from 42 individuals profiled on 8,102-gene microarrays; paired samples from one person clustered together.; Tumours classified into subtypes by pervasive differences in gene expression, including a basal epithelial-like group.
- What it means: The origin of the intrinsic subtypes and of the word basal-like; triple-negative breast cancer is the clinical shadow of this molecular group, though the two overlap imperfectly.
- Caveats: Small sample; subtype robustness was shown in the follow-up papers of 2001 and 2003.; Basal-like and triple-negative are not synonyms: about a fifth of triple-negative tumours are not basal-like and vice versa.

## Sources

- Nature 2000: https://doi.org/10.1038/35021093
- PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10963602/

## Connected records

- key papers: [Gene expression patterns of breast carcinomas distinguish tumor subclasses with clinical implications](https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-sorlie-breast-carcinoma-subclasses-pnas-2001/), [Repeated observation of breast tumor subtypes in independent gene expression data sets](https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-sorlie-repeated-observation-subtypes-brca1-basal-pnas-2003/)
- cancers: [HER2-positive breast cancer](https://onco.cc/cancers/breast-her2-positive/), [HR-positive / HER2-negative breast cancer](https://onco.cc/cancers/breast-hr-positive/), [Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC)](https://onco.cc/cancers/tnbc/)
- technologies: [RNA sequencing & expression profiling](https://onco.cc/technologies/rna-seq/)
- institutions: [UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center](https://onco.cc/institutions/unc-lineberger/)
- terms: [PAM50 / intrinsic subtypes](https://onco.cc/terms/pam50/)
- people: [Charles M. Perou](https://onco.cc/people/charles-perou/)
- journals: [Nature](https://onco.cc/journals/nature/)
- roadmaps: [Triple-negative breast cancer roadmap: from a remainder defined by three negative tests to immunotherapy, antibody-drug conjugates and the residual disease problem](https://onco.cc/roadmaps/tnbc-roadmap/)

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