Figure 7

A 31-gene breast cancer signature capable of predicting distant metastasis of lymph node-negative ER⁻ primary breast cancer. (A) A microarray data set of a total of 198 lymph node-negative breast cancer patients (64 ER⁻ and 134 ER⁺) were used as a training set to identify a 31-gene signature from the 599 genes exhibiting altered expression between A4 and G4. A testing set of 34 patients in combination with the training set was used to validate the signature (39,40). (B) The 31 genes included in the prognostic signature of ER⁻ patients. (C) Kaplan-Meier plots illustrating the probability of relapse-free and distant metastasis-free survival predicted by the 31-gene signature. Upper curve (solid line) illustrates patients predicted as metastasis-free within a 5-year (1,825-d) period. Lower curve (dashed line) predicts patients with distant metastasis before a 5-year period.