| Objective: Breast cancer(BC)is the most common life-threatening malignant tumor that still causes high mortality among women around the world.O ne of the possible methods which has an effect on cancer could be controlled is autophagy.VAMP8(Vesicle-associated membrane protein 8),as a member of the SNARE(SNAP receptor)protein family,plays a crucial role in regulating the combination of autophagosome and lysosomes in the process of autophagy.Autophagy is associated with a variety of cancers,including breast cancer,and exerts different effects during the stages of cancer initiation and progression.It is of great significance for the treatment of breast cancer to explore the mechanism-related factors involed in autophagy.Therefore,immunohistochemical staining was used in our study to detect the e xpression level of VAMP8 protein in breast cancer tissues compared with the normal tissue of the cancer.And then the relationship between the expression level of protein and the clinical features of breast cancer and the prognosis of breast cancer patient s were discussed,which provided the basis for further study of the effect of autophagy on breast cancer and the anticancer strategies correlated with autophagy.Methods:A total of 112 breast cancer tissues and 30 normal mammary gland tissues were collected.All the BC patients treated with modified radical mastectomy at Department of breast surgery,affiliated to C hina medical university between January 2008 and December 2009.The protein expression of VAMP8 was detected both in breast cancer tissue and normal mammary gland tissue via immunohistochemical two-step method.Analysis of data and creation of graphs were performed with the SPSS v17.0(Statistical Package for Social Sciences,Chicago,IL,USA).Categorical variables were expressed as absolute and re lative frequencies and compared by chi-square test,descriptive variables were compared between groups using nonparametric tests.Survival analyses were performed using log-rank and Cox regression method.Two-sided tests were used in all the analyses.Significance level was set at p < 0.05.Results:The immunohistochemical staining showed VAMP8 was mainly located in the cell membrane,but not in the cell nucleus or cytoplasm.It was expressed in both BC tissues and normal tissues,but the expression in BC tissue was higher than that in normal breast tissue(p < 0.001).The overexpression of VAMP8 was significantly associated with tumor size(P=0.007),lymph node metastasis(P=0.024),and recurrence(P=0.001).O ur study also revealed that there was a prominent difference in RFS and OS between VAMP8-high and VAMP8-low patients,higher VAMP8 expression suggested earlier tumor occurrence after resection(p < 0.001)and the reduction of OS(p <0.001)At last,multivariate Cox proportional hazard regression analysis was used to prove that VAMP8-high was associated with lower OS and RFS,indicated as an independent adverse prognostic factors in patients with BC.Conclusion: Our experiment confirmed the high expression of VAMP8 in breast cancer by means of immunohistochemical staining and statistical analysis and convinced VAMP8 could be a practical and potentially effective surrogate marker for the worse prognosis of BC patients for the first time,which provided a potential indicator for the treatment and prognosis of breast cancer. |
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