Triple-Negative Breast Cancer: Expression of Hypoxia-Inducible Factor 1α in Triple-Negative Breast Cancer with Metastasis to Lymph Nodes

Abstract

A great number of scientific studies have shown that the development of different TNBC forms is closely associated with the induction of various signaling pathways and that TNBC cells show greater sensitivity to different drugs. Recent studies showed hypoxia-inducible factor-1α (HIF-1α) was strongly correlated to clinicopathological features in many types of cancers. This molecule seems to play a significant role in the development of different tumors and breast cancer among them. The aim of this study was to evaluate the relationship between immunohistochemical expression of novel prognostic marker-HIF-1α-and clinicopathological features for patients with triple-negative breast cancer. Among 162 breast cancer patients, we identified 111 (68.5%) subjects with triple-negative breast cancer. In our study, TNBC was most commonly assessed as G2 and G3 (52.2%; 45.1%), pT1 and pT2 (34.2%; 62.1%), and pN1 and pN2 (45%; 41.4%). TNBC more often presented HIF-1α expression (43.2%) than non-TNBC (35.2%). TNBC subgroup demonstrated significant correlation between HIF-1α expression and tumor size (pT1-pT4) (p = 0.021), which may suggest that HIF-1 alpha expression in this group of patients may be an additional and significant marker in the evaluation of the advance of the disease, affecting therapeutic decisions.