Genetic association of CCL18 and EGF genes elevate the risk of breast cancer

Abstract

Background: CCL18 and EGF, two biologically plausible cancer biomarkers, are responsible for the emergence and progression of breast invasive carcinoma (BRCA). We aimed to study the expression of the CCL18 and EGF genes and how CCL18 and EGF affect immune function and prognosis in breast cancer.Subjects and methods: To evaluate the relationship between CCL18 and EGF and breast cancer risks, web-based bioinformatics tools were used. The Kaplan-Meier plotter was used to assess the predictive importance of CCL18 and EGF mRNA expression in breast cancer. In order to find whether CCL18 and EGF are independent risk factors for overall survival (OS) and relapse-free survival (RFS) of breast cancer patients, single- and multivariate Cox proportional hazards regression analysis was used. Additionally, STRING database was used to analyze protein-protein interactions.Result: Our findings demonstrated that both CCL18 and EGF exhibit considerable expression and are linked to an elevated risk of breast cancer. In addition, increased expression of CCL18 might indicate poor OS and RFS. Moreover, disease stage and expression level of CCL18 and EGF were correlated with relapse-free survival and overall survival in breast cancer. Analysis of protein-protein interaction based on STRING database gained 8 top genes which could interact with ZWINT, including PMF1, MIS12, DSN1, ZW10, BUB1, BUB1B, CASC5, NDC80, NSL1 and NUF2.Conclusion: Our findings indicate that CCL18 and EGF have high levels of expression in breast tumor tissues and may play a crucial role in the etiology of breast cancer risk.