RELATION BETWEEN LACTOFERRIN LEVELS AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGICAL FEATURES OF BREAST MALIGNANT TUMORS

Sobchenko S.O.¹, Lukianova N.Yu.², Bazas V.M.¹, Zadvorny T.V.¹, Kliusov О.М.¹, Chekhun V.F.²

• ¹Kyiv City Clinical Oncology Center
• ²R.E. Kavetsky Institute of Experimental Pathology, Oncology and Radiobiology, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine

Aim: to analyze the dependence of lactoferrin (LF) levels in serum and patient’s tumor cells on the expression of molecular biomarkers in breast cancer (BC) cells and survival rates. Object and methods: clini­cal samples of 151 patients with stage I–II BC were analyzed in the study; clinical, morphological, immunohistochemical, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and statistical methods were applied. Results: in BC patients, the heterogeneity of lactoferrin levels at the tumor and body level was demonstrated. It was determined that there is a statistically significant correlation between the lactoferrin level in blood serum and its expression in tumor cells with such molecular biological characteristics of BC as the expression of estrogen (ER) and progesterone (PR) receptors (r = -0.53 and r = -0.61, respectively), as well as tumor cells proliferative activity (r = 0.57 and r = 0.49, respectively). The overall 5-year survival of BC patients was found out to be significantly shorter in patients with lactoferrin expression, lack of ER and PR expression and high proliferative potential of tumor cells. Conclusions: the obtained data deepened current knowledge about the association of disorders of iron-binding proteins metabolism in tumor cells and the patients’ body with the malignancy degree of breast cancer; it points to the possibility of applying lactoferrin level in serum and tumor cells to integrated assessment and in-depth characterization of the malignant process in the breast.