Department of Cellular Physiology, "G. Papanicolaou" Research Center of Oncology, Saint Savvas Hospital, 171, Alexandras Avenue, Athens 11522, Greece. talieri@agsavvas-hosp.gr or litsa.talieri@yahoo.com.
Anticancer Res. 2011 Sep; 31(9):3093-100.
Kallikrein-related peptidases (KLKs) have been proposed as potential cancer biomarkers. Contradictions in literature led us to clarify the role of KLK5 as a breast cancer predictor, as well as its association with KLK7 expression.
Semi-quantitative RT-PCR detected KLKs 5 and 7 in 80 breast tissues, 74 neoplastic and 6 normal. Steroid hormone receptors were quantified in all samples. Associations between KLK5 status and clinicopathological variables, as well as disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) of patients were analyzed.
Forty tumor tissues showed high KLK5 expression, which was significantly associated with estrogen receptor status. Significant co-expression of KLKs 5 and 7 was observed in the same cancer samples (p=0.02). Increased KLK5 expression was a statistically significant independent prognostic factor for DFS (p=0.009 univariate analysis and p=0.028 multivariate analysis) and OS of patients (p=0.014, univariate analysis).
Increased KLK5 expression can contribute to the prognosis of DFS and OS of breast cancer patients. KLKs 5 and 7 are co-expressed in breast cancer.
PMID: 21868565 Source: National Library of Medicine.
