title: miR-320a is an independent prognostic biomarker for invasive breast cancer.
abstract: Breast cancer is one of the most common malignancies worldwide and is the second leading cause of cancer-related mortality among females. miRNAs are a class of small noncoding RNAs that are aberrantly expressed in human cancers. Due to their small size and stability, miRNAs have the potential to be efficacious clinical targets. MicroRNA-320a (miR-320a) has been shown to be dysregulated in multiple malignancies. In the present study, the expression levels of miR-320a were investigated in 15 paraffin-embeddedin situbreast carcinoma and 130 invasive breast cancer tissues, and the prognostic value for breast cancer patients was assessed. Chromogenicin situhybridization revealed that 60/130 (46%) invasive breast cancer tissues exhibited high expression levels of miR-320a (staining index score of ≥4). Furthermore, miR-320a staining was found to significantly correlate with tumor size (P=0.046), clinical stage (P<0.001), lymph node metastasis (P<0.001) and distant metastasis (P=0.006). In addition, patients exhibiting low miR-320a expression levels had shorter overall survival times (P<0.001). Univariate and multivariate analyses revealed that miR-320a was an independent prognostic biomarker for invasive breast cancer (hazard ratio, 0.221; 95% confidence interval, 0.050-0.979; P=0.047). Receiver operator characteristic curves revealed that the prognostic value of miR-320a was enhanced when compared with the widely used prognostic biomarkers (estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor and human epidermal growth factor-2) in invasive breast cancer. The results of the present study suggest that miR-320a presents a potential biomarker for the prognosis of invasive breast cancer, and dysregulation of miR-320a may be involved in invasive breast cancer progression.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai 200032, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Haiping
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai 200032, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Juan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai 200032, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Lei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai 200032, P.R. China.
authors.forename: DI
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Ding
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai 200032, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Lei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, Huashan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai 200040, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Chengyu
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Chu
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai 200032, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Qi
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai 200032, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Zude
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, Huashan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai 200040, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Qiang
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Zou
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai 200032, P.R. China ; Department of Pathology, The Fifth People's Hospital of Shanghai, Fudan University, Shanghai 200240, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Xiuping
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Liu
keywords: biomarker; breast cancer; chromogenic in situ hybridization; miR-320a; prognosis