Contralateral parenchymal enhancement on MRI is associated with tumor proteasome pathway gene expression and overall survival of early ER+/HER2-breast cancer patients

Purpose: To assess whether contralateral parenchymal enhancement (CPE) on MRI is associated with gene expression pathways in ER+/HER2-breast cancer, and if so, whether such pathways are related to survival. Methods: Preoperative breast MRIs were analyzed of early ER+/HER2-breast cancer patients eligible for breast-conserving surgery included in a prospective observational cohort study (MARGINS). The contralateral parenchyma was segmented and CPE was calculated as the average of the top-10% delayed enhancement. Total tumor RNA sequencing was performed and gene set enrichment analysis was used to reveal gene expression pathways associated with CPE (N = 226) and related to overall survival (OS) and invasive disease-free survival (IDFS) in multivariable survival analysis. The latter was also done for the METABRIC cohort (N = 1355). Results: CPE was most strongly correlated with proteasome pathways (normalized enrichment statistic = 2.04, false discovery rate =.11). Patients with high CPE showed lower tumor proteasome gene expression. Proteasome gene expression had a hazard ratio (HR) of 1.40 (95% CI = 0.89, 2.16; P =.143) for OS in the MARGINS cohort and 1.53 (95% CI = 1.08, 2.14; P =.017) for IDFS, in METABRIC proteasome gene expression had an HR of 1.09 (95% CI = 1.01, 1.18; P =.020) for OS and 1.10 (95% CI = 1.02, 1.18; P =.012) for IDFS. Conclusion: CPE was negatively correlated with tumor proteasome gene expression in early ER+/HER2-breast cancer patients. Low tumor proteasome gene expression was associated with improved survival in the METABRIC data.