Breast cancer patients treated with tamoxifen may experience recurrence due to endocrine resistance, which highlights the need for additional predictive and prognostic biomarkers. The glyco-phosphoprotein osteopontin (OPN), encoded by the SPP1 gene, has previously shown to be associated with poor prognosis in breast cancer. However, studies on the predictive value of OPN are inconclusive. In the present study, we evaluated tissue SPP1 mRNA and OPN protein expression as markers of recurrence in estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) breast cancer tissue. Tamoxifen-treated patients with recurrence or non-recurrence were selected using a matched case-control design. SPP1 mRNA expression was analysed using qPCR (n = 100) and OPN protein by immunohistochemistry (n = 116) using different antibodies. Odds ratios were estimated with conditional logistic regression. The SPP1 expression increased the risk of recurrence with an odds ratio (OR) of 2.50 (95% confidence interval [CI]; 1.30-4.82), after adjustment for tumour grade, HER 2 status and other treatments to OR 3.62 (95% CI; 1.45-9.07). However, OPN protein expression was not associated with risk of recurrence or with SPP1-gene expression, suggesting SPP1 mRNA a stronger prognostic marker candidate compared to tumor tissue OPN protein.Breast cancer is a heterogeneous disease and the majority of tumours express oestrogen receptors (ER). Patients with ER positive (ER+) breast cancer are candidates for endocrine treatment, such as tamoxifen, although up to 30% of women are expected to experience recurrence due to de novo or acquired tamoxifen resistance 1 . Osteopontin (OPN) is a multifunctional secreted integrin-binding glycoprotein, which has been suggested to have a prognostic value and to be involved in the tamoxifen response 2 . The protein is encoded by the secreted phosphoprotein 1 (SPP1) gene, located on chromosome 4 (4q13). As the SPP1 gene transcript is subject to alternative splicing and the OPN protein to post-translational modifications such as proteolytic processing, glycosylation, tyrosine sulfation and serine/threonine phosphorylation, OPN occurs in several variants. The intracellular variant (iOPN) lacks the N-terminal signal sequence and remains in the cytoplasm. The secreted OPN variants (sOPN) include OPN-a, the full-length protein with a total of 7 exons, and the two splice variants OPN-b and OPN-c, lacking exon 5 (aa 59-72) and 4 (aa 31-57) respectively 3 (Fig. 1). Cleavage by proteases (e.g. thrombin, MMP3 and/or MMP7) produces OPN-N (N-terminal fragment) and OPN-C (C-terminal fragment) 4 . The OPN functions are linked to various physiological and pathological events. Several studies have shown a role of OPN in carcinogenesis, mostly by supporting migratory behaviour in tumour cells and regulating the tumour microenvironment in favour of metastasis 5-9 . In addition, OPN promotes epithelial-mesenchymal transition during metastasis, further indicating an important role in cancer progression 10,11 . The clinical utility is recognized in the CancerSeek test...

The Caspase activation and recruitment domain 8 (CARD8) protein is a component of innate immunity and overexpression of CARD8 mRNA was previously identified in atherosclerosis. However, very little is known about the regulation of CARD8 in endothelial cells and atherosclerosis. The aim of this study was to investigate CARD8 in the regulation of cytokine and chemokine expression in endothelial cells. Sections of human atherosclerotic lesions and non-atherosclerotic arteries were immunostained for CARD8 protein. Expression of CARD8 was correlated to mediators of inflammation in atherosclerotic lesions using Biobank of Karolinska Endarterectomies microarray data. The CARD8 mRNA was knocked-down in human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) in vitro, followed by quantitative RT-PCR analysis and OLINK Proteomics. Endothelial and smooth muscle cells in arterial tissue expressed CARD8 and CARD8 correlated with vWF, CD163 and the expression of inflammatory genes, such as CXCL1, CXCL6 and PDGF-A in plaque. Knock-down of CARD8 in HUVECs significantly altered proteins involved in inflammatory response, such as CXCL1, CXCL6, PDGF-A, MCP-1 and IL-6. The present study suggest that CARD8 regulate the expression of cytokines and chemokines in endothelial cells and atherosclerotic lesions, suggesting that CARD8 plays a significant role in endothelial activation.

Reduced or absent Wwox expression has recently been associated with tamoxifen resistance in breast cancer and has also been proposed as a candidate predictive marker for treatment. We aimed to investigate the correlation of Wwox expression with the outcome of tamoxifen treatment by examining tissues from 912 randomized breast cancer patients. Paraffin-embedded tissues from patient tumors were arranged on tissue microarray, and Wwox protein was stained using immunohistochemistry. After microscopic examination, the results were analyzed with Cox regression, Kaplan-Meier survival curves and the log-rank test. In the group of cases having a tumor absent for Wwox expression, there was no difference in recurrence-free survival between treated and untreated patients (P=0.81). For treated cases with a tumor expressing moderate or strong Wwox protein, recurrence-free survival was improved (P=0.001 and P=0.003, respectively). The test for interaction between Wwox and treatment response demonstrated a decreased risk of recurrence for treated patients with a moderate or strong Wwox expression (HR=0.31, 95% CI 0.10-0.98 and HR=0.28, 95% CI 0.08-0.97, respectively). Our results indicate that patients with high expression of Wwox may gain more benefit from treatment with tamoxifen.

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This study highlights the upregulation of SLC7A5, SLC7A8 and TDO2 in BCC compared with nontumour skin. Our findings imply that amino acid transporters may be further explored as potential targets for future medical treatment.