• Diagnostic of Cytokeratin-19 Gene Expression in Iranian Breast Cancer Patients
  • Abolfazl Movafagh,1 Marzieh Motallebi,2 Atefeh Heidary Pour,3 Neda Mansouri,4 Ali Asghar Kolahi,5 Hossein Hassanian-Moghaddam,6,*
    1. Department of Medical Genetics, School of Medicine, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
    2. Department of Medical Genetics, School of Medicine, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
    3. Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, Pharmaceutical Sciences Branch Islamic Azad University, Iran
    4. Department of Medical Genetics, School of Medicine, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
    5. Social Determinants of Health Research Center, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
    6. Social Determinants of Health Research Center, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran


  • Introduction: Breast cancer is the most common malignancy and the leading cause of cancer-related mortality in women (1). Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in the blood can be an important prognostic indicator for breast cancer patients (2). In both primary and metastatic breast cancer patients, tumor markers consist of various molecules that can be detected in plasma or other body fluids and tissues (3). A diagnostic tumor marker can be used to help in the diagnosis of a disease.CK19, one of the three main keratins besides CK8 and CK18 expressed in the simple and stratified epithelium and various carcinomas including breast cancer (9), is cleaved by caspase 3, and the soluble fragments are released and detected in cancer patients
  • Methods: General information Breast cancer specimens from 50 women (mean age of 40.2 ± 65.55 years) who had undergone surgery at the Tehran University-affiliated hospital and Shohadaye Tajrishbased referral and teaching hospital affiliated to Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences were collected. Also, normal breast tissues (N = 50) were taken from the same patients that had undergone partial or total mastectomy. Data for all patients were collected for analysis. All of them were diagnosed with breast cancer without metastasis and tested by IHC staining. Patients were assigned on the basis of national/international breast cancer protocols and the study was approved, according to local law and regulations, by the Institutional Review Boards of each participating referral hospital. Written informed consent was requested from patients and a questionnaire have been administered
  • Results: The expression level of CK19 from tumor tissues increased significantly (P=0.21) compared to controls. Also, the expression level of metastatic lymph nodes increased significantly.
  • Conclusion: While additional validation studies are needed, the present investigation showed that CK19 can be detected in peripheral blood samples of breast cancer patients, and can predict SLN status before surgery. Further, the CK19 copy number was strongly correlated with the number of metastasis-positive LNs.
  • Keywords: Gene expression, quantitative PCR, Metastasis, Sentinel lymph node