Journal of Molecular Biomarkers & Diagnosis

Deregulated Expression of ANXA1 in Human High-Grade Breast Cancers

Abstract

Einas Mohamed Yousef, David Laperrière, Muhammad Ramzan-Tahir, Sylvie Mader and Louis Arthur Gaboury

Background: Breast cancer is a heterogeneous disease comprising a diversity of tumor subtypes. All of them differ from each other resulting in a wide array of clinical pictures, risks of recurrence and response to treatment. In recent years, tumor biomarkers have changed the way breast cancers are diagnosed and treated. In this paper we have sought to investigate the differential expression of ANXA1, a multifunctional calcium binding protein, among various molecular subtypes of breast cancers and in particular triple negative tumors.

Methods: ANXA1 was first studied using in-silico analysis on available DNA microarray and RNA sequencing data of human breast tissues. Next we ascertained ANXA1 expression on cell lines and breast carcinoma tissue microarrays along with cognate normal breast tissue.

Results: Whereas ANXA1 expression is normally restricted to the normal myoepithelial cell layer it becomes ectopically and aberrantly expressed in tumor cells of a significant minority of aggressive breast cancers. Specifically, we found that ANXA1 expression is severely deregulated in high-grade breast cancers that comprise clinically aggressive tumors such as triple-negative and, to some extent, HER2-positive breast cancers.

Conclusion: Our results indicate that ANXA1 is a valuable breast cancer biomarker that can help to segregate and dissect out subsets of high histological grade breast cancers paving the way to a better understanding of breast cancer progression and metastasis.