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

Abstract EN

The Mucin 1 (MUCI) is over-exprcsscd in most human epithelial cancers and has gained remarkable attention as an oncogcnic molccule.

The aim of the present study is detecting the expression levels of the human Mucin 1 (MUCI) 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 canccrs, 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 (MUCI) 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 w'as 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 wrhich in turn reflect the value of MUCI gene as one of useful tools for discriminating malignant breast tumors from non-malignant ones.