Clinical cancer research : an official journal of the American Association for Cancer Research
October 5, 2026 · via Europe PMC
Endotrophin is a circulating fibroinflammatory biomarker associated with treatment response in human metastatic ER+ breast cancer.
Santos B, Bu D, Virostek M, +9 more, Gruber JJ
AI summary — for doctors, generated from the abstract only
Circulating endotrophin was higher in ER+/HER2- than triple-negative breast cancer and related to treatment response only in metastatic ER+ disease.
What was studied
Biomarker study of 191 serum samples from 98 breast cancer patients plus ovarian neoplasia (n=29) and healthy controls (n=19), with tumour tissue staining in 54 tumour and 28 benign samples.
Key findings
- ER+/HER2- median ETP 35.98 vs 19.67 ng/mL in TNBC
- ETP was associated with treatment response only in the metastatic setting
- ETP was detected in tumour and adjacent benign tissue
Clinical relevance
Suggests endotrophin as a candidate monitoring biomarker and target in metastatic ER+ breast cancer.
Who should care
Limitations
Small, mixed-treatment cohort with serial samples from the same patients, no validation, and limited statistical detail in the abstract.
Research-stage biomarker; not for clinical use.
This is an AI-generated summary of the published abstract, not a clinical recommendation. It may not reflect the full text or subsequent updates — verify against the original source before acting on it.
Abstract
PURPOSE
Soluble factors emanating from fibroinflammatory processes are emerging as cancer biomarkers and therapeutic targets. Endotrophin (ETP), a collagen VI proteolytic fragment, is elevated in human breast cancer patients and drives tumor progression in rodent breast cancer models, an effect which neutralizing antibodies can abrogate. This implies that tracking or targeting elevated ETP levels could inform breast cancer therapeutic strategies. However, we lack precise knowledge about the impact of ETP in specific breast cancer subtypes and whether circulating levels provide predictive or prognostic information.
EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
To address these gaps, we assessed circulating ETP levels among breast cancer patients (n=191 samples from 98 patients) undergoing various treatment modalities, as well as patients with ovarian neoplasia (n=29) and healthy controls (n=19).
RESULTS
We observed higher circulating ETP levels in estrogen receptor-positive (ER+/HER2-) tumors compared with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) in both early-stage and metastatic settings (median [IQR]: 35.98 [25.31-55.05] vs. 19.67 [9.23-42.07] ng/mL, respectively). However, circulating ETP levels were associated with treatment response only in the metastatic setting. ETP was readily detected in tumor specimens (n=54) and adjacent benign sections (n=28) from various breast tumor types, suggesting that both autocrine and paracrine ETP production may be important drivers of tumor growth.
CONCLUSIONS
In summary, these findings identify circulating ETP as a potential biomarker in ER+ metastatic breast cancer and support further investigation of its relationship with disease activity and the development of endotrophin-targeting agents.
DOI
10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-25-3775
PMID
42832372
Research metadata (titles, abstracts, authors, publication dates) is sourced from Europe PMC, which aggregates content from PubMed/MEDLINE, PubMed Central, and other providers under the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM/NCBI). NLM does not claim copyright on abstracts; the original journal publishers or authors may hold rights to the full articles. AI-generated summaries are derived only from the abstract, never the full text, and are always labeled as AI-generated.
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