Tamoxifen treatment substantially improves the 10-year survival of women with estrogen-receptor (ER)-α-positive tumors. However, approximately one-third of all breast cancer patients with ER-α-positive tumors progress on antiestrogen therapy. The molecular mechanism(s) involved in antiestrogen-resistant phenotype of breast carcinoma is not completely understood. The PTEN (phosphatase and tensin homolog deleted on chromosome Ten) gene is a novel candidate tumor suppressor that plays an important role in cell cycle regulation and apoptosis by regulating Protein kinase-B/Akt activity. Previous studies have shown that PTEN downregulation in breast cancer is associated with high-grade tumor, distant metastases and poorer disease-free survival. Decreased PTEN and/or increased protein kinase B/Akt activity in breast cancer cells has recently been associated with resistance to tamoxifen-induced apoptosis. In this study, we have evaluated PTEN expression by immunohistochemistry in 100 tamoxifen-treated ER-α-positive breast cancer patients. Reduced PTEN protein expression was associated with shorter relapse-free survival. When stage I patients were analyzed separately, reduced PTEN expression was a strong predictor of both, shorter relapse-free survival and shorter disease-specific survival. An association of reduced PTEN expression with shorter relapse-free survival and disease-specific survival in stage I patients was still observed after stratification by stage, axillary lymph node status, tumor size, grade, and expression of ER-α, progesterone receptor, and Her-2/neu. In summary, our results showed a strong association between downregulation of PTEN expression in ER-α-positive tumors and failure to tamoxifen treatment.
Keywords
PTEN
tamoxifen
breast carcinoma
Cited by (0)
Emina Torlakovic and Rajni Chibbar: These authors contributed equally to the work.