Arta Fejzullahu
Marmara University, Turkey
Title: Bcl-3 gene expression in metastatic breast cancer patients
Biography
Biography: Arta Fejzullahu
Abstract
Bcl-3 is a proto-oncogene candidate that plays a critical role in the regulation of transcription activation of NF-kB target genes. Studies demostrate that Bcl-3 is involved in metastasis formation. In this line, our study aims to delineate the expression level of Bcl-3 gene and its interacting partners (TGF-β1 and SMAD3) in metastatic breast cancer patients.
25 metastatic breast cancer patients and 25 healthy control donors were included in the study. The study was approved by the Ethics Committee (No: 09.2019.204) and supported by Marmara University Scientific Research Projects Coordination Unit under grant number SAG-C-DRP-120619-0222. 45% of metastatic patients were de novo metastatic and were receiving chemotherapy. Expression profile of target genes was detected by qPCR technique. To evaluate the results of expression levels the SPSS program was performed. Difference was considered statistical significant at p < .05.
Bcl-3 expression level was found significantly downregulated in metastatic breast cancer patients compared to the expression level of healthy controls (p = .000). On the other hand, neither TGF-β1 nor SMAD3 expression showed statistical difference between two groups (p = .276 and p = .259, respectively).
In this study, downregulated expression of Bcl-3 gene may present an important clinical biomarker for early detection of metastasis. Furthermore, because our patients were already receiving chemotherapy, we think that chemotherapy might affect the expression level of Bcl-3. Consequently, further studies in large scale are needed to understand the exact role of Bcl-3 together with other interactive partners in breast cancer metastasis detection.