Li Shuguang, Li Shanshan, Sun Ying, Li Li
Department of Medical Oncology, Cancer Center, Qilu Hospital of Shandong University, Wenhuaxi Road 107#, 250012, Jinan, China.
Tumour Biol. 2014 Aug;35(8):7693-8. doi: 10.1007/s13277-014-1975-0. Epub 2014 May 8.
The Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway is implicated in mammary oncogenesis. Reports of β-catenin expression and its association with outcome in breast cancer are controversial. This study was performed to address the distribution of β-catenin expression in invasive breast cancer and the correlation between β-catenin expression and survival of breast cancer patients, and to determine whether β-catenin was specifically activated in any molecular subtypes. Immunohistochemistry was performed on a tissue microarray containing 169 invasive breast cancers to detect expression of β-catenin. One hundred thirty one of the 169 patients were followed up. Correlation between β-catenin expression and different molecular subtypes was determined using chi-square analysis. Overall survival (OS) was analyzed by Kaplan-Meier method with log-rank test. The invasive breast cancer displayed the different patterns of β-catenin expression from normal tissues with significantly increased cytoplasmic and nuclear staining of β-catenin. Aberrant β-catenin expression was observed in 109 in the 169 cases (64.50 %), and there was no difference in β-catenin expression in the four molecular subtypes. Furthermore, aberrant β-catenin expression was significantly associated with adverse outcome not only in the entire cohort but also in each of the different molecular subtypes. β-catenin activation is preferentially found and is associated with a poor clinical outcome in invasive breast cancer independent of molecular subtype.
Wnt/β-连环蛋白信号通路与乳腺癌发生有关。关于β-连环蛋白在乳腺癌中的表达及其与预后的关系的报道存在争议。本研究旨在探讨β-连环蛋白在浸润性乳腺癌中的表达分布、β-连环蛋白表达与乳腺癌患者生存率的相关性，并确定β-连环蛋白在任何分子亚型中是否被特异性激活。对包含169例浸润性乳腺癌的组织芯片进行免疫组织化学检测β-连环蛋白的表达。对169例患者中的131例进行随访。采用卡方分析确定β-连环蛋白表达与不同分子亚型之间的相关性。采用Kaplan-Meier法和对数秩检验分析总生存期（OS）。浸润性乳腺癌显示出与正常组织不同的β-连环蛋白表达模式，β-连环蛋白的细胞质和细胞核染色显著增加。169例中有109例（64.50%）观察到β-连环蛋白异常表达，四种分子亚型中β-连环蛋白表达无差异。此外，β-连环蛋白异常表达不仅在整个队列中，而且在每种不同分子亚型中均与不良预后显著相关。在浸润性乳腺癌中，无论分子亚型如何，均优先发现β-连环蛋白激活，且与不良临床预后相关。
