BIOINFORMATIC ANALYSIS OF KEY FACTORS REGULATING ELASTIN EXPRESSION IN CONDITIONALLY NORMAL AND MALIGNANTLY TRANSFORMED MAMMARY TISSUE
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15407/oncology.2025.03.182Keywords:
breast cancer, extracellular matrix, elastin, MMP-14, malignant neoplasm progression, bioinformatic analysisAbstract
Summary. Aim: breast cancer (BC) is one of the most common oncological diseases in women worldwide. Malignant neoplasms of the breast are classified into one large heterogeneous group, each diff in morphological manifestations, molecular subtypes, and the aggressiveness of the tumor process. Modern research pays significant attention not only to the epithelial component of the tumor but also to the extracellular matrix (ECM) and its components, such as fibroblasts, which synthesize structural fi particularly elastin. Changes in the extracellular matrix, such as remodeling and degradation, dependent on the activity of matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs), play a key role in BC progression. Aim: to systematically analyze the in silico expression levels and role of elastin (ELN) in BC of different molecular subtypes, with an emphasis on regulatory mechanisms associated with MMP-14 activity. Object and methods: the dependence of ELN and MMP-14 expression levels in conditionally normal breast tissue and BC tissue on clinical characteristics and patient survival was studied using the UALCAN and KM-plotter online resources, respectively. Results: it is shown that a characteristic feature of BC is the reduced expression of ELN at the protein level in the tissue of all molecular subtypes compared to normal tissue. Significantly lower mRNA expression levels of this gene were found in samples of HER2-positive and triple-negative molecular subtypes of BC. High ELN mRNA expression was found to be associated with a favorable course and prognosis of BC and higher survival rates, especially in patients with the Luminal-A subtype of neoplasms, where survival increases by 20% compared to the group with low expression of this marker in the tumor tissue. Conclusions: ELN expression levels at the mRNA and protein levels can be used as prognostic molecular markers in patients with breast cancer of different molecular subtypes.
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