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Breast Cancer Research
Published in: Breast Cancer Research 3/2012

01-06-2012 | Viewpoint

Prognostic signatures in breast cancer: correlation does not imply causation

Authors: Charlotte Ng, Britta Weigelt, Anita Grigoriadis, Jorge S Reis-Filho

Published in: Breast Cancer Research | Issue 3/2012

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Abstract

Testing the statistical associations between microarray-based gene expression signatures and patient outcome has become a popular approach to infer biological and clinical significance of laboratory observations. Venet and colleagues recently demonstrated that the majority of randomly generated gene signatures are significantly associated with outcome of breast cancer patients, and that this association stems from the fact that a large proportion of the transcriptome is significantly correlated with proliferation, a strong predictor of outcome in breast cancer patients. These findings demonstrate that a statistical association between a gene signature and disease outcome does not necessarily imply biological significance.
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Metadata
Title
Prognostic signatures in breast cancer: correlation does not imply causation
Authors
Charlotte Ng
Britta Weigelt
Anita Grigoriadis
Jorge S Reis-Filho
Publication date
01-06-2012
Publisher
BioMed Central
Published in
Breast Cancer Research / Issue 3/2012
Electronic ISSN: 1465-542X
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/bcr3173

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