Abstract 1901: Analysis of the survivin expression in breast tumor tissue from black and white cancer patients

Abstract

Abstract Breast cancer is the most common cancer diagnosed and the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in women. Breast cancer disproportionately affects Black women who have significantly higher mortality rates compared to White women with breast cancer. Although factors like access to healthcare and socioeconomic status contribute significantly to this disparity, there is a need to understand the underlying biological mechanisms that might play an important role. Survivin is a protein that belongs to the inhibitor of apoptosis family. Along with its anti-apoptotic function, it is also involved in the progression of the cell cycle. Survivin is normally expressed during development with no expression detected in most adult differentiated tissues. However, high expression of this protein is found in many cancers which correlates with poor prognosis. The goal of this study was to determine the expression of survivin in tumor tissue from Black and White breast cancer patients. Our first approach was to analyze the TCGA database to confirm our hypothesis that there is differential expression of survivin between the two racial groups and within different subtypes of breast cancer. Secondly, we used immunohistochemical analysis to investigate the expression of survivin in patient tumor tissue samples obtained from Black and White breast cancer patients. Results from the analysis of the TCGA database indicate significantly higher expression of survivin in tumors from Black patients compared to White. High survivin expression is also correlated with higher mortality rates. Immunohistochemical analysis of breast tumors also demonstrated higher expression of survivin in tumor tissue from Black patients. We also observed higher nuclear expression in Black patients compared to White patients. Differential expression was also observed between different subgroups of breast cancer. High expression was seen in the most aggressive triple negative (TNBC) form of breast cancer, which is known to disproportionately occur at higher rates in Black women. Our results along with data available in literature, suggest that survivin plays an important role in breast cancer progression (in correlation to race) and could be a useful diagnostic and/or prognostic marker or a therapeutic target. Citation Format: Kerrie Brown, Yisheng V. Feng, Umesh T. Sankpal. Analysis of the survivin expression in breast tumor tissue from black and white cancer patients [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2023; Part 1 (Regular and Invited Abstracts); 2023 Apr 14-19; Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2023;83(7_Suppl):Abstract nr 1901.