An assessment of neuronal calcium sensor-1 and response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy in breast cancer patients.

Neuronal calcium sensor-1 (NCS-1) has been identified as a binding partner of the taxane, paclitaxel. Our previous study showed that overexpression of NCS-1 increased the efficacy of paclitaxel in vitro, but was associated with poor clinical outcome. Here, we determine if NCS-1 expression is associated with pathological complete response (pCR) to taxane-based neoadjuvant chemotherapy in 105 pre-treatment breast cancer biopsies. Elevated expression of NCS-1 was found to be positively associated with pCR. These results suggest that NCS-1 may be a predictive biomarker for response to taxane-based neoadjuvant chemotherapy in breast cancer.