Expression Of Glucose Regulated Protein 78 In Human Triple Negative Breast Cancer And Its Clinical Implications

Recently, it was reported that glucose regulated protein 78 (GRP78) may predict survival and responsiveness to chemotherapy or endocrine therapy in breast cancer. However, the expression of GRP78 and another glucose regulated protein-GRP94, and their association with clinical and prognostic implications in triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) are still not clear. In this study, we performed immunohistochemistry and statistical analyses on cancer tissues and paired adjacent normal-like tissues from 71 patients with TNBC. We found that (1) the expression level of GRP78 and GRP94 in TNBC cancer tissues was significantly higher than paired adjacent normal -like tissues (P<0.01; P<0.05); (2) GRP78 positive staining presents not only in cytosol of TNBC cancer epithelial cells but also in myoepithelial cells of normal breast tissues; (3) GRP78 high-expression was of positive correlation with expression of HIF-1a (P<0.05) but not with VEGF in TNBC; (4) patients with high GRP78 expression displayed more lymph node metastasis (P<0.05) and poor duration of survival (P<0.05). These findings are thought to substantiate the possibility of using GRP78 as a marker or a target treatment candidate for TNBC.