Purpose: Breast cancer is one of the most common female cancers. Moreover, despite the progress in medicine, its mortality rate is still very high. Therefore, researchers are constantly looking for new prognostic factors, which may simplify disease diagnosis and optimize the therapy. Metastases are responsible for the majority of deaths caused by breast cancer. Epithelial-mesenchymal transition is one of the mechanisms of metastasis, which is controlled by specific transcription factors. In the recent years, many researchers studied the prognostic value of factors promoting the epithelial-mesenchymal transition in patients with breast cancer. This work is an attempt to summarize the current state of knowledge on this issue.
Methods: A systemic search of peer-reviewed articles published between November 2005 and February 2016 was performed using PubMed/MEDLINE database. Most cited articles constituted original papers, although single review articles were also included.
Results: Based on the so far conducted studies, a promising conclusion can be drawn, that several described factors might serve as a putative negative prognostic marker in breast cancer.
Conclusions: Obtained results of this review should encourage researchers to conduct further clinical trials on large patient groups which will evaluate the prognostic value of EMT transcription factors in breast cancer course.
Keywords: Breast cancer; Epithelial–mesenchymal transition; Prognostic markers; Transcription factors.