ZNF503 combined with GATA3 is a prognostic factor in triple-negative breast cancer

Purpose: Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a subtype of breast cancer with poor prognosis. Therefore, there is an urgent need to identify prognostic markers to improve current treatment and therapeutic strategies. The transcriptional factor ZNF503 has been reported to promote aggressive breast cancer development through the down-regulation of GATA3 expression and has been identified as a candidate predictive marker. In this study, we explored whether ZNF503 and GATA3 could serve as prognostic markers independently or in combination.Material and Methods: We performed a survival analysis of 989 breast cancer patients from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), and validated the findings in 202 breast cancer patients from tissue microarray (TMA).Results: In TCGA database, the mRNA expression of GATA3 and ZNF503 could not predict TNBC prognosis alone, though the ratio index, ZNF503/GATA3 could be a novel prognostic biomarker in TNBC patients. In TMA database, we detected the protein expression of ZNF503 and GATA3 and found that the combination of the two genes, ZNF503-GATA3, significantly improved the predictive ability of clinical outcomes.Conclusions: The results indicated that the binding index of ZNF503 and GATA3 could be used as a prognostic biomarker in TNBC.

Automated summary

This study investigated whether the transcription factor ZNF503 and GATA3 could serve as prognostic markers in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). The results showed that the ratio index ZNF503/GATA3 could be a novel prognostic biomarker in TNBC. The combination of ZNF503 and GATA3 significantly improved the predictive ability of clinical outcomes in TNBC patients.