Evaluation of and genes and p62 protein expression in breast tumor tissues of Iranian patients.

Autophagy is a cellular process that plays a major role in the fate of tumor cells. Understanding the role of autophagy in cancer therapy is a major challenge, particularly for breast cancer as the sole top cause of mortality among women. In this study, we evaluated the gene expression of and and the levels of p62 protein, in breast tumors and compared them to a control condition. To explore the role of autophagy in breast cancer, we acquired tumor biopsies from 41 new cases of breast cancer patients. We extracted total RNA from each biopsy and used real-time PCR to quantify and -specific RNA expression. In addition, we evaluated the expression of the p62 protein in paraffin-embedded tumor tissue using the immunohistochemistry technique. The data revealed an upregulation of and a downregulation of in tumor tissues compared to the control condition. The correlation between p62 expression and / showed a negative and positive correlation, respectively, confirming autophagy activation in the tumor tissues. However, there was no correlation between autophagy markers and tumor size, grade and stage. The findings revealed that autophagy activation was found in breast tumor tissues, suggesting that autophagy can be a target for breast cancer therapy.