Fig. 2

Distinct transcriptomic changes during long-term aromatase inhibitor treatment. a Unsupervised hierarchical clustering with most variant 500 genes across all samples and long-term treated samples. ER6, ER7, ER8 correspond to oestrogen receptor (ER) Allred scores 6, 7, and 8, respectively. b Multidimensional scaling (MDS) plot using the 500 genes with the highest variance across all time points. Each dot corresponds to a sample and sizes represent the duration of treatment. c Intra-patient (comparison of samples from the same patient) correlations of transcriptome are shown. Dormant (blue); resistant (red); before (pre, ≤ 0 days), early-on (early, 13–120 days), and long-term (long, > 120 days) neoadjuvant aromatase inhibitor therapy with letrozole. ***p < 0.001; **p < 0.01; *p < 0.05. NA not available, Rec+ recurrence, Rec– recurrence free