Objective: To investigate glypican-3 expression in breast cancer tissue and its correlation with clinicopathological factors of breast cancer.
Methods: The glypican-3 gene expressions in the breast cancer tissues and adjacent normal tissues from 52 patients were detected with RT-PCR method， and then their positive rates were determined. The glypican-3 protein expressions in the breast cancer tissues and adjacent normal tissues were also detected by Western blot technique.
Results: The expression rate of glypican-3 mRNA of the breast cancer tissue was significantly lower than that of the adjacent normal tissue (P＜0.05)， and of the patients with lymph node metastasis was significantly lower than that of the patients without lymph node involvement (P＜0.05). Furthermore， the less differentiated the cancer， the lower the expression rate of glypican-3 mRNA (P＜0.05)， but the glypican-3 gene expression was unrelated to the age and tumor size of patients (P＞0.05). The expression level of glypican-3 protein of the breast cancer tissue was significantly lower than that of the adjacent normal tissue (P＜0.05)， and of the patients with lymph node metastasis was significantly lower than that of the patients without lymph node involvement (P＜0.05). A poorer differentiation of the cancer tissue was correlated with lower expression level of glypican-3 protein (P＜0.05).
Conclusions: The low expression state of glypican-3 may probably be associated with the occurrence and development， and as well as invasion or metastasis of breast cancer.