Abstract
The transcription factor, FOXF2, plays an important role in tissue development, extracellular matrix synthesis, and epithelial-mesenchymal interactions, implying that it may be associated with the metastatic capabilities of cancer cells. However, the relationship between FOXF2 expression and breast cancer progression, metastasis, and prognosis, remains to be elucidated. In this study, FOXF2 mRNA levels in 305 primary breast cancer tissues were examined using RT-QPCR. Results showed that FOXF2 mRNA levels in primary breast cancer were negatively associated with tumor progression, including tumor size, number of metastatic lymph nodes, and clinical stage. Patients with low FOXF2 mRNA levels had a high risk of relapse and metastasis within three years. Low FOXF2 mRNA levels could predict shorter disease-free survival for those patients with histological grade II and triple-negative breast cancer. Taken together, we conclude that decreased FOXF2 expression indicates the early-onset metastasis and poor prognosis for patients with histological grade II and triple-negative breast cancer.
Highlights
Breast cancer is a heterogeneous disease, tumors with the same clinical, pathological, and hormone receptor status, may have different metastatic potentials or even different metastatic phenotypes due to inherently dissimilar biological characteristics [1]
FOXF2 mRNA levels are associated with multiple clinicopathological features in breast cancer To determine if there is a link between FOXF2 mRNA levels in primary tumors and clinicopathological features of breast cancer, we used reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-QPCR) to detect FOXF2 mRNA levels in primary breast cancer samples with different clinicopathological features
The Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curves were made based on FOXF2 mRNA levels of samples and the corresponding disease-free survival (DFS) status of patients
Summary
Breast cancer is a heterogeneous disease, tumors with the same clinical, pathological, and hormone receptor status, may have different metastatic potentials or even different metastatic phenotypes due to inherently dissimilar biological characteristics [1] These differences cause patients to have differing responses to chemotherapy [2], endocrine therapy [3], and molecular targeted therapy [4]. The basal-like breast cancer subtype, which commonly lacks expression of the estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR), and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2), is widely perceived as being synonymous with triple-negative breast cancer [9] It has enriched CD44+CD242/low cell subpopulations with cancer stem cells (CSCs) properties [10,11], and is characterized as a mesenchymal phenotype, with poor differentiation, hematogenous dissemination, and the absence of a specific target for endocrine or antiHER2 target therapy, which leads to poor prognosis in patients [12]. Numerous studies have used microarrays or reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-QPCR) to investigate the prognostic importance of mRNA expression from single genes or sets of genes in different breast cancer subgroups [13,14]
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