Overexpression of Predicts Poor Prognosis in Patients with Luminal Breast Cancer.

BACKGROUND

Family with sequence similarity 234 member B (), a protein-coding gene, is mainly expressed in brain tissues. Its clinical significance and biological function in tumors, especially in breast cancer (BC), have not been elucidated.

METHODS

We firstly investigated the expression pattern of at the mRNA and protein levels using Oncomine, TCGA portal, GEPIA, TIMER, HPA, and UALCAN databases, then applied bc-GenExMiner to assess the associations between expression level of and clinicopathological features of BC. Besides, we also verified the expression of expression in clinical BC samples using qRT-PCR. Subsequently, GEPIA, bc-GenExMiner, and TIMER databases were used to analyze the prognostic significance of in all BC and different molecular subtypes. Finally, we conducted co-expression analysis and gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA). Additionally, we explored the regulatory mechanism of in BC.

RESULTS

Both bioinformatics analysis and experimental verification confirmed that the expression was significantly higher at the mRNA and protein levels in luminal BC tissues than in adjacent normal tissues. High expression was significantly correlated with older age, estrogen receptor-positive, progesterone receptor-positive, human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative, wild-type p53, low Nottingham prognostic index, low Scarff-Bloom-Richardson grade, lymph node metastasis positivity, and high tumor stage. Moreover, survival analysis indicated that high expression was significantly related to a worse prognosis in patients with luminal BC. GSEA indicated that was positively related to membrane transport process and negatively associated with immune response function. Besides, mechanism exploration indicated that pseudogene might act as endogenous RNA to compete with or for binding to , thereby upregulating the expression of in luminal BC.

CONCLUSION

Our results suggest that may be a candidate therapeutic target or prognostic marker for luminal breast cancer.