You Yanjie, Li Haijun, Qin Xin, Ran Yonggang, Wang Fei
Pathological Examination and Research Center, Luohe Medical College, Luohe, 462002, China.
Department of Pharmacy, Luohe Medical College, Luohe, 462002, China.
Cell Oncol (Dordr). 2016 Feb;39(1):89-95. doi: 10.1007/s13402-015-0260-6. Epub 2015 Dec 2.
Recently, we identified the esophageal carcinoma related gene 4 (ECRG4) as a novel candidate tumor suppressor gene and a promising therapeutic target in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). In addition, we found that reduced ECRG4 expression in NPC was associated with promoter hypermethylation. The aim of the current study was to assess the expression status of the ECRG4 protein in breast cancer and to clarify its clinicopathological significance and potential prognostic implications.
Western blotting was used to examine ECRG4 protein levels in 20 paired breast cancer tissues and adjacent noncancerous tissues. In addition, we performed ECRG4 immunohistochemistry on 113 clinicopathologically well-characterized breast cancer samples and assessed putative associations between its expression and overall patient survival rates.
We found that ECRG4 protein expression was significantly reduced in the breast cancer tissues compared to the noncancerous tissues. Clinicopathological analyses revealed that loss of ECRG4 protein expression, observed in 41.6 % (47/113) of the primary breast cancer tissues tested, was significantly correlated with lymph node metastasis (P = 0.026), advanced tumor stage (P = 0.042) and unfavorable overall survival (P = 0.004). Additional multivariate analyses revealed that ECRG4 protein expression may serve as an independent prognostic factor for the prediction of patient survival (P = 0.033).
Our data suggest that loss of ECRG4 protein expression may be involved in tumor progression and may serve as a prognostic biomarker for breast cancer.
最近，我们鉴定出食管癌相关基因4（ECRG4）是一种新型候选肿瘤抑制基因，也是鼻咽癌（NPC）中一个有前景的治疗靶点。此外，我们发现NPC中ECRG4表达降低与启动子高甲基化有关。本研究的目的是评估ECRG4蛋白在乳腺癌中的表达状态，并阐明其临床病理意义和潜在的预后意义。
采用蛋白质免疫印迹法检测20对乳腺癌组织及癌旁非癌组织中ECRG4蛋白水平。此外，我们对113例临床病理特征明确的乳腺癌样本进行了ECRG4免疫组化检测，并评估其表达与患者总生存率之间的假定关联。
我们发现，与非癌组织相比，乳腺癌组织中ECRG4蛋白表达显著降低。临床病理分析显示，在检测的原发性乳腺癌组织中，41.6%（47/113）存在ECRG4蛋白表达缺失，这与淋巴结转移（P = 0.026）、肿瘤晚期（P = 0.042）及不良总生存率（P = 0.004）显著相关。进一步的多因素分析显示，ECRG4蛋白表达可能作为预测患者生存的独立预后因素（P = 0.033）。
我们的数据表明，ECRG4蛋白表达缺失可能参与肿瘤进展，并可能作为乳腺癌的预后生物标志物。
