BackgroundYoung breast cancer occupies a higher and higher proportion of breast cancer, especially in Asia, and is associated with a more unfavorable prognosis compared with the disease arising in older women. However, the poor prognosis of young breast cancer cannot be fully explained by the clinical and molecular factors.MethodsThis study investigated 1125 Chinese breast cancer patients diagnosed from 2009 to 2013. A data mining of gene expression profiles was performed for the young and older breast cancer patients, identifying significantly differentially expressed genes. Quantitative RT-PCR, Western blotting and immunohistochemistry assay were carried out for the clinical sample validations.ResultsThe investigation firstly displayed that young patients (≤45 years) accounted for 47.6 % (535/1125) of breast cancer, and clinically associated with some unfavorable factors related to poor prognosis, such as invasive pathological type, high tumor grade, lymph node positive, ER negative and triple-negative subtype. Subsequently, 553 significantly differentially expressed genes were identified by the data mining. Of them, a set of genes related to immune function were observed to be up-regulated in young patients with breast cancer. Impressively, the CXCL13 (C-X-C motif chemokine 13) expression level showed the most significant difference (FC = 2.64, P = 8.2 × 10−4). Furthermore, the validations with clinical samples and correlation analysis demonstrated that CXCL13 was indeed highly expressed in young breast cancer and closely associated with some prognostic factors including lymph node positive and ER negative.ConclusionThis is the first to indicate the clinical relevance of CXCL13 to young breast cancer and represents a potential therapeutic target for young breast cancer.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12967-015-0521-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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By releasing Ag + ions and generating reactive oxygen species (ROS), silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) not only have good anti-tumor activity but also display cytotoxicity towards normal cells which limits their further application in the medical field. Up to now, there was still no appropriate method to reduce the cytotoxicity while improving the anti-cancer activity of Ag NPs. This paper focuses on counteracting the toxic side effect of the ROS from Ag NPs while simultaneously improving their anti-cancer effect. We used a-TOS to modify Ag NPs and investigated their bioactivity in vitro for the first time. The modified AgNPs with a high a-TOS concentration not only show much higher anti-tumor activity than Ag NPs alone but also promote the survival of normal cell lines slightly, while the modified Ag NPs with a low a-TOS concentration display a lower cytotoxicity against normal cell lines without affecting their anti-cancer activity when compared to Ag NPs alone. Therefore, this work presents a higher potential for cancer treatment than using Ag NPs alone.

Due to the competitive growth on the crystal face of seed, it is always difficult to control the morphology of the formation of nanoparticles precisely by a seed-mediated growth method.