Expressions of SOX2, TWIST, and SNAIL in breast cancer and their clinical implications / 医学研究生学报

ABSTRACT

Objective As important transcription factors, SOX2, TWIST and SNAIL are closely related to breast cancer me?tastasis. The aim of this study was to explore the expressions of SOX2, TWIST and SNAIL in breast cancer and the relationship between the three factors. Methods We collected 74 specimens of breast cancer and another 74 from paired normal tissue from January 2012 to January 2013. Using immunohistochemistry, we determined and compared the expression of SOX2 in the breast cancer and normal tissues. We also detected the expressions of TWIST and SNAIL proteins and analyzed the relationship of SOX2, TWIST and SNAIL ex?pressions with the clinicopathological characteristics of breast cancer as well as the correlation between the three proteins. Results The expression of SOX2 was significantly higher in the breast cancer than in the normal tissues (25.7% vs 8.1%, P=0.004) and corre?lated with the grade, lymph node metastasis, and TNM stage of breast cancer ( P<0.05) , while the expressions of TWIST and SNAIL were significantly correlated with lymph node metastasis and clinical TNM stages of the malignancy ( P<0.05) . The protein expression of TWIST was correlated positively with those of SOX2 ( Cc=0. 325, P<0.005) and SNAIL (Cc=0.308, P<0.008), and so was that of SNAIL with that of SOX2 (Cc=0.275, P<0.018). Conclusion The SOX2 protein is highly expressed in breast cancer. The expres?sions of SOX2, TWIST and SNAIL are closely related to lymph node metastasis of the malignancy and the three factors are interacted coor?dinatively in the metastasis of breast cancer.