Abstract
Background:Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed female cancer and is a major cause of cancer-related deaths in women. Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is defined as ER, PR and HER2 negative, which are characterized by rapid progression with low survival rates with limited therapeutic choices. Polo-like kinase 1 protein acts as a cell division regulator which is highly expressed in many tumors making it a potentially valuable target for antiproliferative therapies. In this study we tried to evaluate the value of this marker as a possible therapeutic target in TNBC. Methods:This research studied the immunohistochemical expression of PLK1 done on 49 paraffin blocks of TNBC female patients and then correlated with the different clinicopathological parameters. Results:Our results showed high PLK1 expression in 91.9% of cases. Most of the high grade tumors showed high PLK1 high score (76.9%). All cases showing lymph node metastasis showed high PLK1 expression, implying a statistically significant correlation between PLK1 expression and tumor grade as well as N stage. Conclusion:PLK1, although a negative prognostic factor, but is a promising therapeutic target for treating TNBC patients.
Highlights
Breast cancer (BC) is the most commonly diagnosed female cancer and is a major cause of cancer-related deaths in women (Burstein et al, 2015)
In Egypt, BC represents 38% of all female cancers according to the National Cancer Institute, Cairo university (Donizy et al, 2016)
The most prevalent histological type was invasive BC no special type (IBC-NST) accounting for 65.4% of cases (32 cases), followed by BC with medullary pattern accounting for 16.3% of cases (8 cases)
Summary
Breast cancer (BC) is the most commonly diagnosed female cancer and is a major cause of cancer-related deaths in women (Burstein et al, 2015). Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is defined as ER, PR and HER2 negative It represents about 15% to 20% of all breast cancer patients (Elston, and Ellis, 2002) who often present with visceral involvement, early recurrence and rapid progression with low survival rates providing limited window of treatment opportunity, exclusion of both hormonal therapy and trastuzumab (herciptin) treatment (Ferlay et al, 2015). TNBC is responsible for significant number of breast cancer-associated deaths due to lack of molecular-targeted therapy. Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is defined as ER, PR and HER2 negative, which are characterized by rapid progression with low survival rates with limited therapeutic choices. Polo-like kinase 1 protein acts as a cell division regulator which is highly expressed in many tumors making it a potentially valuable target for antiproliferative therapies. Conclusion: PLK1, a negative prognostic factor, but is a promising therapeutic target for treating TNBC patients
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