TITLE:
Differential Expression of Glu-Tubulin in Basal-Like Phenotype Carcinoma of the Mammary Gland
AUTHORS:
Hajime Kuroda, Yasuo Imai, Kazuko Kuroso, Masato Kojima, Yoshihiko Ueda
KEYWORDS:
Glu-Tubulin; Basal-Like Phenotype Carcinoma; Mammary Gland
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Breast Cancer Research,
Vol.2 No.3,
June
27,
2013
ABSTRACT: High levels of tubulin expression have been described in
a variety of human malignant tumors, and glu-tubulin, in which the C-terminal
tyrosine of α-tubulin is removed by
tubulin carboxypeptidase. Over-expression has been reported in the malignant
tumors of the mammary gland and correlated with poor prognosis
immunohistochemically. Furthermore, Nielsen et al. proposed that the use of a panel of four markers (ER, HER 2, CK 5/6, and
EGFR) could accurately identify basal-like phenotype carcinoma (BPC) with
widely available standard pathologic tools. In our study, major prognostic
factors such as patient age, tumor size, histological grade, axillary lymph
node metastasis, vessel invasion, and local recurrence in BPC were not
significantly different from non BP carcinoma (NBPC). However, the BPC group showed
a higher ratio of distant metastasis than that of the NBPC group. In
triple-negative carcinoma (TNC) cases, staining for glu-tubulin was observed in
46 cases (63.8%), which consisted of 42 of the 58 BPC patients (72.4%) and 4 of
the 14 NBPC patients (28.6%). A significant association was found between the expression
of glu-tubulin and BPC, but not NBPC. It seems that our findings also agree
with the observation that BPC exhibits aggressive biological behavior
and increases the content of glu-tubulin, which plays a greater role in
migration and invasion.