Abstract
Glycolytic enzymes, such as hexokinase and phosphofructokinase, have been reported to be upregulated in many cancer types. Here, we evaluated these two enzymes in 54 breast cancer samples collected from volunteers subjected to mastectomy, and the results were correlated with the prognosis markers commonly used. We found that both enzymes positively correlate with the major markers for invasiveness and aggressiveness. For invasiveness, the enzymes activities increase in parallel to the tumor size. Moreover, we found augmented activities for both enzymes when the samples were extirpated from patients presenting lymph node involvement or occurrence of metastasis. For aggressiveness, we stained the samples for the estrogen and progesterone receptors, HER-2, p53 and Ki-67. The enzyme activities positively correlated with all markers but Ki-67. Finally, we conclude that these enzymes are good markers for breast cancer prognosis.
Highlights
Breast cancer is the most common malignant cancer type in women globally, costing billions of dollars per year for its treatment [1,2,3,4]
Due to the samples characteristics, we subdivided the samples into three groups, where 7% were less than 2 cm (T1), 50% were more than 2 cm but less than 5 cm (T2) and 43% were more than 5 cm (T3; Figure 1A)
We have reported that PFK, one of the major regulatory glycolytic enzymes, has altered activity [31, 35], expression patterns [32] and intracellular distributions in cancers [30,31,32, 34, 35]
Summary
Breast cancer is the most common malignant cancer type in women globally, costing billions of dollars per year for its treatment [1,2,3,4]. Breast cancers are classified according to size (T), the involvement of lymph nodes (N) and the occurrence of distant metastasis (M). This TNM classification is widely used, attributing numbers according to the severity of the case [6]; T is classified from 0–4 where 0 is no evidence of a tumor, N is classified from 0–3 and M is classified as 0 or 1, www.impactjournals.com/oncotarget following the same principle [6, 7]. The presence of Ki-67 and/or the absence of p53 are strongly indicative of a highly proliferative and aggressive cancer [10, 15, 16]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
