Significance Of Chemokine Receptor CXCR3 Expression In Breast Cancer

Objective To investigate the expression of CXCR3 and its association with clinicopathologic features in breast carcinoma.Methods The expression levels of CXCR3 in eighteen samples of breast cancer and corresponding normal tissues were investigated using reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) analysis, real-time RT-PCR analysis.Immunohistochemistry was carried out to examine the expression of CXCR3 in 80 breast cancers,20 breast fibroadenoma and 15 normal breast tisues.Results (1) RT-PCR analysis showed higher levels of CXCR3 in breast cancer tissues than that in normal breast tissues. Real-time RT-PCR analysis showed that expression levels of CXCR3 in breast cancer tissues were significantly higher than that in the corresponding normal breast tissues(P<0.05). (2) Immunohistochemistry analysis showed that the positive rate of CXCR3 in breast cancer tissues was significantly higher than that in breast fibroadenoma and normal breast tisues(P<0.05). The expression levels of CXCR3 in lymph node-positive group was higher than that in lymph node—negative group(P<0.05); The expression of CXCR3 was positively correlated with the number of positive lymph node involved by metastasis, tumor size and pTNM tumor stage(P<0.05).Conclusions Chemokine receptor CXCR3 was up-regulated in breast cancer, and was associated with the progression of breast cancer; CXCR3 might be a novel molecular marker to predict lymph node metastasis and prognosis of breast cancer.