Dephosphorylated cofilin expression is associated with poor prognosis in cases of human breast cancer: a tissue microarray analysis

BACKGROUND: Proteins in the cofilin pathway regulate actin dynamics and may be involved in cancer cell migration and invasion. However, there are no direct data that suggest that dephosphorylated cofilin can affect breast cancer prognosis. METHODS: We assessed the expressions of cofilin and phosphorylated cofilin (P-cofilin) in breast cancer tissue microarrays (290 patients, mean follow-up: 95.7±2.49 months) to evaluate dephosphorylated cofilin and its relationship with breast cancer prognosis. The associations of pathological characteristics with cumulative survival were evaluated using Kaplan–Meier analysis. RESULTS: Univariate analyses revealed that overall survival was associated with cofilin levels, N category, TNM stage, estrogen receptor status, progesterone receptor status, and molecular subtypes. Cofilin status and TNM stage independently affected overall survival, although P-cofilin expression was not associated with patient survival. In the P-cofilin-negative subgroup, cofilin expression was significantly associated with patient survival, although cofilin expression was not significantly associated with patient survival in the P-cofilin-positive subgroup. We further analyzed the P-cofilin-negative cases and found that Ki-67 expression was significantly elevated in the subgroup that was strongly positive for cofilin (P=0.002). CONCLUSION: Among P-cofilin-negative patients with breast cancer, cofilin expression defines a population of patients with lower overall survival, which suggests that dephosphorylated cofilin expression might predict the prognosis in cases of P-cofilin-negative breast cancer. Furthermore, our results suggest that inhibitors of dephosphorylated cofilin expression may provide therapeutic benefits in patients with breast cancer.