The γ-Synuclein Expression in Breast Cancer and its Correlation with the Expression of the HER-2/neu Gene

Lewy body (4) Purpose: Synuclein has been identified as an important neuroprotein for developing pathologic deposits in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease patients. -synuclein is also known as a breast cancer-specific gene 1 thats’s not found in normal breast tissues but it has been reported to be overexpressed in breast cancer, ovarian cancer and other tumors. To evaluate the availability of -synuclein expression as a prognostic factor for infiltrative breast cancer, we analyzed its correlation with the clinical parameters and the HER-2/neu gene expression. Methods: Two hundred fiffty samples of breast cancer tissues embedded in paraffin and that were obtained from the infiltrative breast cancer patients who were operated in our institution from January 1995 to December 2000 were analyzed with employing the tissue microarray technique. The expression of -synuclein was studied with immunohistochemistry and with using -synulcein antibodies. One hundred thirty one cases that showed favorable staining were selected and studied retrospectively. Results: Fiffty five% (71/131) of the patients showed -synuclein overexpression. The histopathological findings that significantly correlated with -synuclein overexpression were the number of metastatic lymph nodes (p<0.01) and the cancer stage (p<0.01). Using the same tissue mircoarray, the HER-2/neu gene expression and -synuclein expression also showed statistically significant correlation (p=0.04). Conclusion: -synuclein overexpression showed significant correaltion with lymph node metastasis and cancer stage. It also showed significant relevance with the HER-2/neu gene expression, and that is already known to be a prognostic factor for breast cancer. Therefore -synuclein may be a useful prognostic factor for infiltrative breast cancer and further studies on the its correlation with survival, local recurrence, and distant metastasis should be conducted (J Breast Cancer 2007;10:114-9)