Aurora-A identifies early recurrence and poor prognosis and promises a potential therapeutic target in triple negative breast cancer

Abstract

Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) acquires an unfavorable prognosis, emerging as a major challenge for the treatment of breast cancer. In the present study, 122 TNBC patients were subjected to analysis of Aurora-A (Aur-A) expression and survival prognosis. We found that Aur-A high expression was positively associated with initial clinical stage (P = 0.025), the proliferation marker Ki-67 (P = 0.001), and the recurrence rate of TNBC patients (P<0.001). In TNBC patients with Aur-A high expression, the risk of distant recurrence peaked at the first 3 years and declined rapidly thereafter, whereas patients with Aur-A low expression showed a relatively constant risk of recurrence during the entire follow-up period. Univariate and multivariate analysis showed that overexpression of Aur-A predicted poor overall survival (P = 0.002) and progression-free survival (P = 0.012) in TNBC. Furthermore, overexpression of Aur-A, associated with high Ki-67, predicted an inferior prognosis compared with low expression of both Aur-A and Ki-67. Importantly, we further found that Aur-A was overexpressed in TNBC cells, and inhibition of this kinase inhibited cell proliferation and prevented cell migration in TNBC. Our findings demonstrated that Aur-A was a potential therapeutic target for TNBC and inhibition of Aur-A kinase was a promising regimen for TNBC cancer therapy.