Increased Expression of Hyaluronic Acid Binding Protein 1 Is Correlated With Poor Prognosis in Patients With Breast Cancer

Background and Objectives: Hyaluronic acid binding protein I (HABP1), a family of proteins interacting with hyaluronan (HA), had been associated with cell adhesion and tumor invasion. The aim of this Study was to investigate the correlation between clinicopathologic factors and patient survival time with the expression of HABP1 in breast cancer patients. Methods: Expression of HABP1 mRNA and protein were detected with real-time quantitative PCR and immunohistochemical staining in 63 breast cancer and non-cancerous matched tissues. Results: The mRNA expression level of HABP1 was unrelated to the patient's age, tumor size, histological grade, TNM stage. However, it proved to be positively related to axillary nodes metastasis (P=0.008). Furthermore, it was shown that the survival rate of patients with low HABP1 expression was significantly higher than that of patients with high HABP1 expression (P=0.025). Multivariate analysis revealed that HABP1 mRNA expression level was a significant factor for predicting prognosis (P=0.022). The immunohistochemistry results showed that the expression level of HABP1 in breast cancer cells was higher than that in normal breast cells. Conclusion: HABP1 might be an independent predictive factor for breast cancer prognosis and up-regulation of HABP1 might play an important role in the metastasis of breast cancer. J. Surg. Oncol. 2009;100:382-386 (C) 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc.