Salloum E

Breast cancer is one of the most malignant cancers responsible for women death worldwide. Approximately half of them will eventually develop metastases. With early detection, chances of cure increases with a long term survival over 95%. Tumor cells secrete chemotactic factors capable of attracting monocytes to the site of inflammation. Once recruited, monocytes become under direct influence of malignant cells and differentiate into Tumor-Associated Macrophages able to secrete different pro-angiogenic factors, an important extracellular matrix change that enables tumor growth. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relation between expression levels of selected biomolecules: HIF-1α, MMP-1, MMP-9 and cancer progression. Breast biopsies were collected from patients with four different grades of severity (Grade 0 - Grade 3). cDNA’s was synthetized and quantified using Q-RT-PCR. Correlation between the expression level of these biomolecules and cancer progression / staging was done using statistical tests. Our results showed that expression levels of HIF-1α were significantly higher in G1 compared to G0; MMP-1 and MMP-9 were highly expressed at more advanced stages. As sensitivity/specificity statistical test confirmed, a sequential test is recommended in which HIF-1α is used as a marker for early stages of breast cancer, MMP-1 for determining G2 and G3 stages, and MMP-9 to confirm G3 staging.