The cell cycle-related genes RHAMM, AURKA, TPX2, PLK1, and PLK4 are associated with the poor prognosis of breast cancer patients

Breast cancer is the third most common type of cancer diagnosed. Cell cycle is a complex but highly organized and controlled process, in which normal cells sense mitogenic growth signals that instruct them to enter and progress through their cell cycle. This process culminates in cell division generating two daughter cells with identical amounts of genetic material. Uncontrolled proliferation is one of the hallmarks of cancer. In this study, we analyzed the expression of the cell cycle-related genes receptor for hyaluronan (HA)-mediated motility (RHAMM), AURKA, TPX2, PLK1, and PLK4 and correlated them with the prognosis in a collective of 3952 breast cancer patients. A high messenger RNA expression of all studied genes correlated with a poor prognosis. Stratifying the patients according to the expression of hormonal receptors, we found that in patients with estrogen and progesterone receptor-positive and human epithelial growth factor receptor 2-negative tumors, and Luminal A and Luminal B tumors, the expression of the five analyzed genes correlates with worse survival. qPCR analysis of a panel of breast cancer cell lines representative of major molecular subtypes indicated a predominant expression in the luminal subtype. In vitro experiments showed that radiation influences the expression of the five analyzed genes both in luminal and triple-negative model cell lines. Functional analysis of MDA-MB-231 cells showed that small interfering RNA knockdown of PLK4 and TPX2 and pharmacological inhibition of PLK1 had an impact on the cell cycle and colony formation. Looking for a potential upstream regulation by microRNAs, we observed a differential expression of RHAMM, AURKA, TPX2, PLK1, and PLK4 after transfecting the MDA-MB-231 cells with three different microRNAs. Survival analysis of miR-34c-5p, miR-375, and miR-142-3p showed a different impact on the prognosis of breast cancer patients. Our study suggests that RHAMM, AURKA, TPX2, PLK1, and PLK4 can be used as potential targets for treatment or as a prognostic value in breast cancer patients.

Options for the Treatment of Mucinous Ovarian Carcinoma

OPINION STATEMENT

Complete surgical resection is the gold-standard treatment for all mucinous ovarian carcinoma (MOC) cases. Advanced-stage disease is often additionally treated with adjuvant platinum-based chemotherapy; however, these were developed largely against the more common high-grade serous ovarian carcinoma and have low efficacy in treating MOC. More effective therapeutics are needed to treat late-stage and platinum-resistant tumors; however, traditional drug development and clinical trial paradigms are a major challenge for such a rare disease. New approaches to support evidence-based treatment decisions are required, such as registry trials. Recently, a number of targeted therapies have emerged as viable treatment options in other cancer types, and for some of these, the actionable tumor mutations are also seen in MOC. Thus, a promising alternative approach to provide benefit to current MOC patients involves DNA sequencing to identify a tumor's unique mutational profile and allow matching to available targeted agents. Such a pipeline can involve special approval to administer a drug already approved for clinical use in other cancer types to a given MOC patient, or their inclusion in existing ongoing clinical trials, such as basket trials encompassing patients with tumors from a range of anatomical sites. Implementation of such personalized medicine can be boosted using improved pre-clinical models, where through a clinical research collaboration a patient's own tumor cells can be used to a test a range of putative therapies prior to administration in the clinic, enabling selection of the available pharmaceutical/s that give any given patient the best possible chance of cancer remission.