Significance of aeg‐1 expression in correlation with vegf, microvessel density and clinicopathological characteristics in triple‐negative breast cancer

Abstract

PURPOSE: Our study is to examine astrocyte-elevated gene-1 (AEG-1) expression in triple-negative breast cancer and to determine whether it is associated with vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), microvessel density (MVD), clinicopathological parameters and poor survival. METHODS: Specimens from 125 patients with triple-negative breast cancers were investigated by immunohistochemistry for MVD, AEG-1 and VEGF expression. Correlations between the expression of AEG-1, VEGF, MVD, and various clinicopathological factors including survival status were studied. RESULTS: AEG-1 and VEGF were highly expressed in 56.8% and 52.8% of triple-negative breast cancer patients, respectively. The intensity of AEG-1 was gradually up-regulated from VEGF-MVD-low, VEGF-high, or MVD-high to VEGF-MVD-high tissues using Western blot analysis. Statistically significant correlation was found among AEG-1 and VEGF, and MVD. Moreover, AEG-1 expression was correlated with clinical stage, lymphatic venous invasion, lymph nodal metastasis, tumor size, Ki67, and recurrence. Patients with AEG-1 high-expression showed far lower disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) rates than those with AEG-1 low-expression. For VEGF and MVD, there were similar results in these patients. Only AEG-1 expression and tumor size were independent prognostic factors for both DFS and OS by multivariate analysis. However, the prognostic impact of tumor size was not as strong as that of AEG-1. CONCLUSIONS: AEG-1 expression may be related with tumor angiogenesis and progression and is a valuable prognostic factor in patients with triple-negative breast cancer.