Patient Sociodemographic Factors Impact the Breast Cancer Microenvironment.

In an HR+ breast cancer transcriptomic dataset enriched for Black patients, tumors from Black women show increased collagen deposition and prognostically unfavorable T-cell landscapes.

• Why it matters: Black women with HR+ breast cancer have worse outcomes than White women, and limited genomic representation has constrained identification of biological mechanisms behind this disparity.
• What they did: The study generated an HR+ transcriptomic dataset controlling for healthcare access and education, then used in vitro and in vivo models to test whether tumor cell-intrinsic signaling drives race-aligned collagen patterns and metastatic phenotypes.
• The result: Patient analyses linked unfavorable T-cell signatures to poverty burden, and across multiple independent datasets STAT4 emerged as a potential master regulator of this poverty-associated immune phenotype.