Abstract:    Background and purpose: As a member of Catenin family, little is known about expressive significance and mechanism of Delta-catenin in numerous tumors. In present study, we investigated the expression of Delta-catenin in breast cancer tissues and its correlation with the prognosis of patients. Methods: We examined the expression of Delta-catenin and its correlation with clinicopathological factors of patients by immunohistochemistry in 92 cases of breast cancer tissues with tissue micro-array. The mRNA and protein expression of Delta-catenin were also detected in another 32 cases of frozen paired breast cancer tissues and normal breast tissues. Results: Compared with normal breast tissues, the mRNA and protein expression of Delta-catenin were increased in breast cancer tissues, and expression of Delta-catenin was closely associated with histological grade and lymph node metastasis (P=0.016 and 0.022, respectively). Moreover, Kaplan-Meier survival analysis revealed that patients with high Delta-catenin expression had shorter survival than patients with low expression (P=0.015), and multivariate Cox analysis revealed that high Delta-catenin expression was also an independent prognostic factor (P=0.017). Conclusion: Our results suggest that Delta-catenin acts as an oncoprotein when overexpressed in breast cancer, and its expression is associated with poor prognosis of patients.

Key words: Delta-catenin, Breast cancer, Prognosis