Tissue proteomics of the human mammary gland: towards an abridged definition of the molecular phenotypes underlying epithelial normalcy.

Our limited understanding of the biological impact of the whole spectrum of early breast lesions together with a lack of accurate molecular-based risk criteria for the diagnosis and assignment of prognostic significance to biopsy findings presents an important problem in the clinical management of patients harboring precancerous breast lesions. As a result, there is a need to identify biomarkers that can better determine the outcome of early breast lesions by identifying subpopulations of cells in breast premalignant disease that are at high-risk of progression to invasive disease. A first step towards achieving this goal will be to define the molecular phenotypes of the various cell types …