Fatty acid synthase expression and its association with clinico-histopathological features in triple-negative breast cancer

• Published in: Oncotarget Vol. 8; no. 43; pp. 74391 - 74405
• Main Authors: Giró-Perafita, Ariadna, Sarrats, Ariadna, Pérez-Bueno, Ferran, Oliveras, Glòria, Buxó, Maria, Brunet, Joan, Viñas, Gemma, Miquel, Teresa Puig
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Impact Journals LLC 26.09.2017
• Subjects: Research Paper; EGFR; breast cancer molecular subtypes
• ISSN: 1949-2553; 1949-2553
• DOI: 10.18632/oncotarget.20152

Triple-Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC) has poor prognosis and no approved targeted therapy. We previously showed that the enzyme fatty acid synthase (FASN) was largely expressed in a small TNBC patients' cohort and its inhibition synergized with cetuximab in TNBC preclinical mouse models. Here, we evaluated FASN and EGFR expression in a cohort of TNBC patients and we study their prognostic role and their association with clinico-histopathological features, intrinsic TNBC subtypes and survival. FASN, EGFR, CK5/6 and vimentin expression were retrospective evaluated by Immunohistochemistry in 100 primary TNBC tumors. FASN expression was classified into high and low FASN groups. EGFR, CK5/6 and vimentin expression were used in TNBC intrinsic subtypes classification. FASN was expressed in most of the TNBC patients but did not correlate with overall survival or disease-free survival in this cohort. High FASN group was significantly associated with positive node status. FASN expression was significantly higher in Basal-Like patients than in Mesenchymal-Like ones. EGFR expression was positive in 50% of the tumors, and those patients showed poorer DFS. Altogether, our findings provide a rationale for further investigation the prognostic role of FASN and EGFR expression in a larger cohort of TNBC patients.