| Background and objective:The incidence of breast cancer in China is increasing. Understanding the molecular biology of breast cancer, finding new therapeutic targets is of great significance. More and more evidence has shown that chemokines and chemokine receptors are associated with tumor growth, invasion and metastasis. It is important to investigate the role of chemokines along with their receptors in breast cancer to elucidate the molecular mechanism of the growth and metastasis of breast cancer. The role of CXCR7 in breast cancer is not well elucidated. The aim of this study was to explore the expression of CXCR7 in breast cancer and to investigate its clinical significance in breast cancer.Methods:Different CXCR7 expression levels in breast cancer cell lines were showed by flow cytometric analysis and western blot. Lentiviral-mediated technique was used in the CXCR7 overexpression in MDA-MB-231 cells.Effects of CXCR7 on the cell cycle distribution and proliferation were investigated by flow cytometric analysis, CCK-8 and migration assay. Immunohistochemistry was used to evaluate the CXCR7 expressions of samples from 183 primary breast cancer patients.Results:In current study, we showed that CXCR7 is differentially expressed in human breast cancer cell lines. Specifically, we found that CXCR7 is overexpressed in breast cancer cell lines with high lung metastatic potential. Cell cycle distribution is not changed after CXCR7 overexpression. While, the proliferation rate is increased after CXCR7 upregulated. In human breast cancer samples tested by immunohistochemistry, we showed that CXCR7 expression is positively correlated with HER2 expression, lymph node involvement as well as lung metastasis (P<0.05).Conclusions:CXCR7 protein was differentially expressed in breast cancer cell lines; CXCR7 promotes tumor cell proliferating while does not affect the cell cycle distribution; More HER2 positive, lymphnode positive and lung metastasis in CXCR7 positive group in breast cancer. |
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