Abstract
Breast cancer is a progressive and potentially fatal disease that affects women of all ages. Like all progressive diseases, early and reliable diagnosis is the key for successful treatment and annihilation. Biomarkers serve as indicators of pathological, physiological, or pharmacological processes. Her2/neu, CA15.3, estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR), and cytokeratins are biomarkers that have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for disease diagnosis, prognosis, and therapy selection. The structural and functional complexity of protein biomarkers and the heterogeneity of the breast cancer pathology present challenges to the scientific community. Here we review estrogen receptor-related putative breast cancer biomarkers, including those of putative breast cancer stem cells, a minor population of estrogen receptor negative tumor cells that retain the stem cell property of self-renewal. We also review a few promising cytoskeleton targets for ER alpha negative breast cancer.
Highlights
IntroductionCancer cells frequently exhibit unique gene expression profiles resulting in their limitless replication, and in their ability to actively attack other tissues, recruit the collaborating cells necessary for sustained angiogenesis, and afford them protection from the host immune system [1]
Cancer cells frequently exhibit unique gene expression profiles resulting in their limitless replication, and in their ability to actively attack other tissues, recruit the collaborating cells necessary for sustained angiogenesis, and afford them protection from the host immune system [1].on the molecular level, tumors are never silent, but are constantly signaling their presence through the release of a diverse range of enzymes, modulators, and mediators [2]
All of these results suggest that ERβ might exert a protective effect against the mitogenic activity of estrogens mediated by ERα, and may function as a tumor suppressor, as the loss of ERβ expression seems to correlate with the progression of breast carcinomas
Summary
Cancer cells frequently exhibit unique gene expression profiles resulting in their limitless replication, and in their ability to actively attack other tissues, recruit the collaborating cells necessary for sustained angiogenesis, and afford them protection from the host immune system [1]. Some breast cancer cells lose their ability to express ERα, among other proteins. The resulting disease is a therapy-resistant cancer. To identify human breast cancer biomarkers between ERα(+) and ERα(−) breast tumors, tissues were microdissected and differential protein expression by adjacent tissues was identified [3], microdissected breast tissues composed of either normal ductal epithelium or ductal epithelium containing Ductal Carcinoma in situ (DCIS). The heterogeneity of breast cancer architecture is currently hindering proteomics research in this area [5]. Promising new biomarker identification methodologies are under way like lectin glycoarray technology [6], microfluidic-based biosensors [7], lectinomics [8], gold nanoparticles [9,10,11], enrichment of low-abundance proteins [12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20], and dye-doped silica nanoparticle labels [21]
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