The Expression And Clinical Significance Of Fibroblastic Growth Factor Receptor2in Patients With Breast Cancer

Background and objectives: Breast cancer is one of the most commonmalignancies in women. The histological tumor type, grade, tumor size, lymph nodeinvolvement, steroid hormone receptor expression and HER-2status all dictate theprognosis of the disease and choice of treatment. However, assessment of theseclinical and pathological features is not sufficient to fully capture the heterogeneousclinical course of breast cancer, making it necessary to continue the search for newbiomarkers associated with metastases and prognosis. In recent years, twogenome-wide association studies identified that fibroblast growth factor receptor2(FGFR2) as one of the few candidate genes linked with breast cancer susceptibility.FGFR2plays an important role in cell growth and cell differentiation. It’s geneprovided with genetic polymorphism. The recent studies have shown that the geneticpolymorphism associated with risk of development of breast cancer and clinicalfactors. But most studies focus on gene level. Therefore, the precise role of FGFR2protein expression in breast cancer is still unknown. Our study examines FGFR2protein expression in breast cancer and determines its associations withclinicopathological features and survival.Methods: Many studies showed that IDC2patients composed a large percentageof all invasive breast cancer patients. The most important inclusion criterion wasinvasive ductal carcinoma grade2(IDC2). Specimens from125invasive ductalcarcinoma grade2(IDC2) breast cancer patients as well as30benign tissues wereinvestigated by immunohistochemistry for FGFR2protein expression. Associationsbetween the expression of FGFR2and various clinicopathological features as well as survival status were studied.Result: Cytoplasmic and nuclear FGFR2were expressed in64.8%and56.8%ofbreast cancer patients, respectively. Both of the expression rates are significantlyhigher than that of benign tissues. Cytoplasmic FGFR2expression was significantlyassociated with tumor size and TNM stage. However, we found that there were nosignificant correlations between FGFR2nuclear levels and clinicopathologicalparameters. Furthermore, patients with high expression levels of cytoplasmic andnuclear FGFR2showed much lower overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival(DFS) rates than those patients with low FGFR2expression. Cytoplasmic FGFR2expression and lymph node metastasis were independent prognostic factors for bothDFS and OS by multivariate analysis.Conclusions: Breast cancer tissues exhibited dramatically higher levels ofFGFR2protein expression compared with benign tissues. FGFR2expression wassignificantly correlated with tumor size and TNM stage. High FGFR2expression iscorrelated with poor OS and DFS in breast cancer patients. Cytoplasmic FGFR2expression and LNM were independent prognostic factors. FGFR2could be abiomarker for poor prognosis.