Fig. 1

Breast cancer classification based on triple-hormone receptor (THR) expression. A Immunohistochemical (IHC) staining with ER, AR, and VDR of tissue microarrays (TMAs) from breast cancer patients (top) identifies four distinct subtypes (bottom). Hormone receptor positive tumors were identified as those with > 1% protein expression. B Heatmaps showing the expression of the top 300 (left) and top 50 (right) differentially expressed genes between THR-[0/1] and THR-[2/3] cell lines in the Cancer Cell Line Encyclopedia (CCLE) dataset. C Heatmap showing the expression of the THR-50 genes in human samples from the Molecular Taxonomy of Breast Cancer International Consortium (METABRIC) cohort. The heatmap shows the samples annotation including ER status measured by IHC, clinical 3-gene classifier groups (based on ER, HER2, and MIB-1), histological grade, and PAM-50 groups. Red = high expression, blue = low expression. D–E Kaplan–Meier survival plots show the difference in recurrence-free survival (RFS) (D) and overall survival (OS) (E) between METABRIC samples predicted as 0 (low-risk) and 1 (high-risk) by THR-50. High-risk samples have significantly worse RFS (HR = 1.5, 95%CI: 1.3–1.7, p < 0.0001) and OS (HR = 1.7, 95%CI: 1.5–1.9, p < 0.0001) compared to low-risk samples. Survival time is in months. The hazard ratios and 95% confidence intervals are shown. THR: triple-hormone receptors; HR: hazard ratio; CI: confidence interval