Soluble Periostin is a potential surveillance biomarker for early and long-term response to chemotherapy in advanced breast cancer

Noninvasive biomarkers for the assessment of response to chemotherapy in advanced breast cancer (BCa) are essential for optimized therapeutic decision-making. We evaluated the potential of soluble Periostin (POSTN) in circulation as a novel biomarker for chemotherapy efficacy monitoring. Two hundred and thirty-one patients with different stages of BCa were included. Of those patients, 58 patients with inoperable metastatic disease receiving HER2-targeted or non-targeted chemotherapy were enrolled to assess the performances of markers in recapitulating the chemotherapy efficacy assessed by imaging. POSTN, together with CA153 or CEA at different time points (C0, C2, and C4) were determined. POSTN levels were significantly associated with tumor volume (P < 0.0001) and TNM stages (P < 0.0001) of BCa. For early monitoring, dynamics of POSTN could recapitulate the chemotherapy efficacy among all molecular subtypes (Cohen’s weighted kappa = 0.638, P < 0.0001), much better than that of carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) and cancer antigen 153 (CA15-3). For early partial response, superior performance of POSTN was observed (Cohen’s weighted kappa = 0.827, P < 0.0001) in cases with baseline levels above 17.19 ng/mL. For long-term monitoring, the POSTN response was observed to be strongly consistent with the course of the disease. Moreover, progression free survival analysis showed that patients experienced a significant early decrease of POSTN tended to obtain more benefits from the treatments. The current study suggests that soluble POSTN is an informative serum biomarker to complement the current clinical approaches for early and long-term chemotherapy efficacy monitoring in advanced BCa.