Abstract
Background: Beclin-1 plays a vital role in the vesicle nucleation in the process of autophagy and has an important role in development, tumorigenesis, and neurodegeneration.
Aim of Study: Study the role of beclin-1 and correlate the degree of its expression with available clinic-pathological data in different molecular types of breast cancer.
Material and Methods: Immunohistochemistry was per-formed to examine the expression of Beclin-1 different mo-lecular subtypes of invasive ductal carcinoma and correlating it to clinicopathological parameter.
Results: The expression of Beclin-1 was decreased in breast cancer in relation to normal tissue. High expression was significantly correlated with tumor grade, distant metas-tasis and stage. All the cases with high Beclin-1 expression were triple negative breast cancer cases.
Conclusions: Triple negative breast cancer cases showed the highest tumor stage, grade, distant metastasis and beclin-1 expression suggesting that the overexpression of Beclin 1 may by itself confer an aggressive biological course. It could be a therapeutic target.