Evaluation of diagnostic and prognostic value of mucin (MUC 1) gene expression in breast cancer patients

Abstract

The Mucin 1 (MUC1) is over-expressed in most human epithelial cancers and has gained remarkable attention as an oncogenic molecule. The aim of the present study is detecting the expression levels of the human  Mucin 1 (MUC1) mRNAs in the peripheral blood of breast cancer patients in comparison with benign and healthy controls  as a tool for screening and diagnosis the early stage breast cancers, and estimating the diagnostic and prognostic values of these levels in association with tumor size and lymph node status. The marker was determined in peripheral blood (PB) of 55 patients  with  Invasive Ductal Carcinoma  and samples from 20 healthy donors, and 10 women with newly diagnosed benign breast tumors were served as control group using reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Mucin 1 (MUC1)  was detected in 40 (72.73%) of peripheral blood of breast cancer patients studied, 1(10%) of the benign tumors and 2(10%)  of healthy individuals. It showed statistically significant relations with size of the tumor, and Lymph node involvement. On the other hand, it was statistically non- significant for age of breast cancer patients. The present study results reflected the possibility of detecting of that gene transcript in normal and benign blood samples as well as the breast cancer samples which in turn reflect the value of MUC1 gene as one of useful tools for discriminating malignant breast tumors from non-malignant ones.