pSTAT3 expression associated with survival and mammographic density of breast cancer patients

Background:Constitutive activation of STAT3 have been shown in several tumor types including breast cancer.We investigate STAT3 expresion as possible molecular marker for breast cancer early detection, as well asprognostic factor for determination of tumor agressiveness.Methods:In this study we measure p(Y705)STAT3 expression in tumor and adjacent tissue of breast cancerpatients by Western blot. For relapse-free survival (RFS) and overall survival (OS) we used Log-Rank test.Results:We show that average expression of p (Y705) STAT3 in tumor tissue is higher compared to adjacenttissue. Moreover, we found that patients with HER2 positive receptors had significantly higher pSTAT3 ex-pression compared to HER2 negative patients. We showed that patients with high mammographic density hadsignificantly higher tumor expression of pSTAT3 compared to patients with low mammographic density. Also,we show that pSTAT3 expression correlates with longer RFS in the entire group of patients, as well as in thegroup of ER positive, in lymph node positive and in older group of breast cancer patients (with age over 50).Furthermore, in the entire group of patients, in ER positive, in lymph node positive and in older group of patient,high expression of pSTAT3 showed a better survival than low expression of pSTAT3.Conclusion:Considering that the expression of pSTAT3 is associated with longer RFS and survival, it can be usedas prognostic tools for determination of group of breast cancer patients with low-risk.