Table 1.
Selected significantly up-regulated genes when comparing breast cancer tissue with normal breast tissue by cDNA microarray.
Figure 1.
Expression of GILT and survival analysis in breast cancer.
(A–C) GILT expression in breast tissues (original magnification, ×200). (A) Representative positive staining of GILT in normal breast tissue. (B) Representative positive staining of GILT in breast cancer tissues. (C) Representative negative staining of GILT in breast cancer tissues. (D–F) The expression status of GILT in breast cancer tissues were correlated with DFS by Kaplan–Meier estimates. (D) Decreased DFS time was observed in GILT negative patients (P<0.0001). (E) Decreased DFS time was observed in the lower GILT expression range score group (P = 0.0041). (F) Decreased DFS time was observed in the lower total GILT expression score group (P = 0.0041).
Table 2.
Correlation between GILT staining (including intensity, proportion score, and total score) and clinicopathologic characteristics as well as DFS of breast cancer patients (n = 218).
Table 3.
Multivariate Cox regression analysis on 3-year disease-free survival of 218 patients with breast cancer (including intensity and proportion of GILT expression).
Table 4.
Multivariate Cox regression analysis on 3-year disease-free survival of 218 patients with breast cancer (including total GILT expression score).
Figure 2.
Subgroup analyses for DFS according to GILT expression.
(A) Forest plots showing hazard ratios (and 95% confidence intervals) for disease-free survival for the intensity of GILT staining in subgroup analyses by clinicopathologic characteristics of patients. (B) Forest plots showing hazard ratios (and 95% confidence intervals) for disease-free survival for the proportion score of GILT staining in subgroup analyses by clinicopathologic characteristics of patients. (C) Forest plots showing hazard ratios (and 95% confidence intervals) for disease-free survival for the total score of GILT staining in subgroup analyses by clinicopathologic characteristics of patients. Disease-free survival favored higher GILT expression over decreased expression, including the intensity, proportion, as well as total score of GILT staining in all subgroups (HRs>1).
Figure 3.
Involvement of GILT in tumorigenesis and lymph node metastasis in breast cancer.
(A) GILT mRNA expression increased in malignant cells compared with adjacent normal epithelial cells. The real-time PCR results confirmed that there was a 2.18-fold up-regulation of GILT mRNA in breast cancer cells compared with adjacent normal epithelial cells (* P<0.05, n = 19). Relative means ± standard deviation for GILT mRNA obtained from tumor tissue and normal adjacent tissue are shown. (B) GILT protein expression decreased in malignant tissues compared with adjacent normal epithelial tissues. The immunohistochemistry results confirmed that 78.95% (15/19) showed weaker staining in carcinoma tissue than in adjacent normal breast tissue; representative images are shown (original magnification, ×200). (C) GILT protein expression in matched normal-cancerous-metastatic breast tissues (n = 44). Representative GILT expression in respective normal-cancerous-metastatic breast tissues sections from one patient. Both intensity and proportion score of GILT staining in primary breast cancer as well as metastatic cancer tissue were 0, compared with 2 and 4 respectively in normal breast tissue (original magnification, ×200).
Table 5.
GILT expression was significantly down-regulated in breast cancer tissues compared with normal epithelial tissues (n = 19).