ArticleCancer cell international2011
Brain-derived neurotrophic factor expression predicts adverse pathological & clinical outcomes in human breast cancer.
Article in Cancer cell international, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 31 papers.
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Who cites it
31 citing papers in PubMed, 57 citations in OpenAlex.
- Understanding nerve-tumor interactions: From basic biology to therapeutic innovation.Genes & diseases · 2026Review
- Integrated transcriptomic and immune-associated network analysis of breast cancer patient-derived organoids reveals candidate inflammatory biomarkers.Frontiers in bioengineering and biotechnology · 2026Article
- Neurturin gene IVSI-663 polymorphism but not RET variants is associated with increased risk for breast cancer.Laboratory medicine · 2025Article
- Review
- The contribution of the nervous system in the cancer progression.BMB reports · 2024Review
- Long non-coding RNAs as novel prognostic biomarkers for breast cancer in Egyptian women.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Review
- BDNF Acts as a Prognostic Factor Associated with Tumor-Infiltrating Th2 Cells in Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma.Disease markers · 2021Article
- TrkB-Targeted Therapy for Mucoepidermoid Carcinoma.Biomedicines · 2020Article
- The potential of small molecule brain-derived neurotrophic factor: mimetics to treat inherited retinal degeneration.Neural regeneration research · 2019Article
- piMGM: incorporating multi-source priors in mixed graphical models for learning disease networks.Bioinformatics (Oxford, England) · 2018Article
- Brain-derived neurotrophic factor/tropomyosin-related kinase B signaling pathway contributes to the aggressive behavior of lung squamous cell carcinoma.Laboratory investigation; a journal of technical methods and pathology · 2017Article
- Cooperation of neurotrophin receptor TrkB and Her2 in breast cancer cells facilitates brain metastases.Breast cancer research : BCR · 2017Article
- Detecting Disease Specific Pathway Substructures through an Integrated Systems Biology Approach.Non-coding RNA · 2017Article
- Curcumin Ameliorates Cisplatin-Induced Nephrotoxicity and Potentiates Its Anticancer Activity in SD Rats: Potential Role of Curcumin in Breast Cancer Chemotherapy.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2017Article
- Article
- Upregulation of brain-derived neurotrophic factor in advanced gastric cancer contributes to bone metastatic osteolysis by inducing long pentraxin 3.Oncotarget · 2016Article
- More expression of BDNF associates with lung squamous cell carcinoma and is critical to the proliferation and invasion of lung cancer cells.BMC cancer · 2016Article
- Tropomyosin-related kinase B/brain derived-neurotrophic factor signaling pathway as a potential therapeutic target for colorectal cancer.World journal of gastroenterology · 2016Review
- Extensive rewiring of epithelial-stromal co-expression networks in breast cancer.Genome biology · 2015Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionBrain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) has established physiological roles in the development and function of the vertebrate nervous system. BDNF has also been implicated in several human malignancies, including breast cancer (BC). However, the precise biological role of BDNF and its utility as a novel biomarker have yet to be determined. The objective of this study was to determine the mRNA and protein expression of BDNF in a cohort of women with BC. Expression levels were compared with normal background tissues and evaluated against established pathological parameters and clinical outcome over a 10 year follow-up period.
methodsBC tissues (n = 127) and normal tissues (n = 33) underwent RNA extraction and reverse transcription, BDNF transcript levels were determined using real-time quantitative PCR. BDNF protein expression in mammary tissues was assessed with standard immuno-histochemical methodology. Expression levels were analyzed against tumour size, grade, nodal involvement, TNM stage, Nottingham Prognostic Index (NPI) and clinical outcome over a 10 year follow-up period.
resultsImmuno-histochemical staining revealed substantially greater BDNF expression within neoplastic cells, compared to normal mammary epithelial cells. Significantly higher mRNA transcript levels were found in the BC specimens compared to background tissues (p = 0.007). The expression of BDNF mRNA was demonstrated to increase with increasing NPI; NPI-1 vs. NPI-2 (p = 0.009). Increased BDNF transcript levels were found to be significantly associated with nodal positivity (p = 0.047). Compared to patients who remained disease free, higher BDNF expression was significantly associated with local recurrence (LR) (p = 0.0014), death from BC (p = 0.018) and poor prognosis overall (p = 0.013). After a median follow up of 10 years, higher BDNF expression levels were significantly associated with reduced overall survival (OS) (106 vs. 136 months, p = 0.006). BDNF emerged as an independent prognostic variable in multivariate analysis for disease free survival (DFS) (p = 0.026) and approached significance for OS (p = 0.055).
conclusionBDNF expression was found to be significantly higher in BC specimens compared to normal tissue. Higher transcript levels were significantly associated with unfavourable pathological parameters including nodal positivity and increasing NPI; and adverse clinical outcomes including LR, death from BC, poor prognosis, reduced DFS and OS. BDNF offers utility as a prognostic marker and potential for targeted therapeutic strategies.
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Registered trials
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