Research Paper Volume 11, Issue 18 pp 7796—7804
Up-regulation of lysophosphatidylcholine acyltransferase 1 (LPCAT1) is linked to poor prognosis in breast cancer
- 1 Department of Pathology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg D-20246, Germany
- 2 General, Visceral and Thoracic Surgery Department and Clinic, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg D-20246, Germany
- 3 Department of Pathology, Clinical Center Osnabrück, Osnabrück D-49076, Germany
- 4 Breast cancer center, Niels-Stensen Clinic, Franziskus-Hospital Harderberg, Georgsmarienhütte D-49124, Germany
- 5 Department of Gynecology and Clinic, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg D-20246, Germany
- 6 Department of Gynecology, Regio Clinic Pinneberg, Pinneberg D-25421, Germany
- 7 Department of Gynecology, Regio Clinic Elmshorn, Elmshorn D-25337, Germany
- 8 Department of Gynecology, Regio Clinic and Senior Citizen Center Itzehoe, Itzehoe D-25524, Germany
- 9 Cantonal Hospital Basel, University of Basel, Basel CH-4031, Switzerland
Received: July 16, 2019 Accepted: September 9, 2019 Published: September 18, 2019
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.102287How to Cite
Copyright © 2019 Lebok et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Dysregulation of lipid metabolism is common in cancer. Lysophosphatidylcholine acyltransferase 1 (LPCAT1) has been implicated with various cancer types. Here we analyzed by immunohistochemistry its expression in 2,197 breast cancers. LPCAT1 staining was found in 97.8% of 1,774 interpretable tumors, including 48.1% with weak, 28.7% with moderate, and 14.4% with strong expression. The frequency of LPCAT1 positivity depended on the histological tumor type. Moderate or strong LPCAT1 positivity was more common in cancers of no special type (NST) (46.2%) than in lobular carcinomas (25.9%; p<0.0001). Strong LPCAT1 was associated with BRE grade, tumor cell proliferation and overall survival in all cancers and in the subgroup of NST cancers (p<0.0001, each). In the subset of NST cancers the prognostic effect of LPCAT1 expression was independent of pT, and BRE grade (p<0.0001 each). A comparison with molecular features showed that LPCAT1 was strongly associated with estrogen receptor negativity (p<0.0001), progesterone receptor negativity (p<0,0001), amplification of HER2 (p<0.0001) and MYC (p=0.0066), as well as deletions of PTEN (p<0.0001) and CDKNA2 (p=0.0151). It is concluded that LPCAT1 overexpression is linked to adverse tumor features and poor prognosis in breast cancer. These data also highlight the important role of lipid metabolism in breast cancer biology.