Expression of WNT5B in breast cancer and its clinical significance

AIM: To study the expression of WNT5B in the breast cancer and further to discuss the correlation between WNT5B and clinicopathologic characteristics of breast cancer. METHODS: The expression of WNT5B at mRNA and protein levels was measured by real-time PCR and Western blot in 67 cases of breast cancer and the tissue adjacent to carcinoma. In addition, the immunohistochemical method was used to detect the expression of WNT5B in the breast cancer and the tissue adjacent to carcinoma. The relationships between WNT5B expression and clinicopathologic indexes were also analyzed. RESULTS: The expression of WNT5B in the breast cancer was obviously lower than that in the tissue adjacent to carcinoma (P<0.05). The expression of WNT5B at mRNA and protein levels in 67 samples of breast cancer was in various degrees. The expression of WNT5B in T≤20 mm group of human breast cancer was obviously higher than that in T>20 mm group (P<0.05). The expression of WNT5B had no obvious correlation with axillary lymph node metastasis, histological grade and immunohistochemical indexes of ER, PR, c-ErBb-2, p53 and Ki67 (P>0.05) in the breast cancer. CONCLUSION: The expression of WNT5B decreases obviously in breast cancer. The expression of WNT5B is related to primary tumor size, which provides new ideas for the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer, suggesting that WNT5B may be a new molecular marker for prognosis of breast cancer.