“…In the present study, nuclear NRF2 immunoreactivity was detected in 44% of the carcinoma cases, while it was positive in 2% of non-neoplastic breast tissues adjacent to the carcinoma and 4% of BBD tissues. Previous studies have demonstrated that NRF2 immunoreactivity is frequently detected in various human malignancies, such as breast (Loignon et al 2009, Karihtala et al 2011, Hartikainen et al 2012, lung (Inoue et al 2012), gastric (Wang et al 2011), pancreatic (Hong et al 2010), intrahepatic cholangiocellular (Wakai et al 2011), gallbladder (Wang et al 2010), endometrial (Chen et al 2010), and ovarian (Konstantinopoulos et al 2011) carcinomas, and its rate of immunopositivity ranged between 26 and 76% in these studies. The results of the immunohistochemical studies carried out in the present study also indicated a significant association between NRF2 status and immunoreactivity of NQO1, which is known to be an NRF2-induced cytoprotective gene (Lewis et al 2012), and subsequent in vitro studies revealed that both MCF7 and SK-BR-3 cells transfected with NRF2 siRNA had decreased NQO1 expression at both mRNA and protein levels.…”