The Alterations and Potential Roles of MCMs in Breast Cancer

Xinyu Liu; Ying Liu; Qiangshan Wang; Siqi Song; Lingjun Feng; Chunying Shi

doi:10.1155/2021/7928937

The Alterations and Potential Roles of MCMs in Breast Cancer

J Oncol. 2021 Aug 24:2021:7928937. doi: 10.1155/2021/7928937. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Xinyu Liu¹, Ying Liu^{1

2}, Qiangshan Wang³, Siqi Song¹, Lingjun Feng⁴, Chunying Shi¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Basic Medicine, College of Medicine, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266071, China.
² Institute for Translational Medicine, The Affiliated Hospital of Qingdao University, College of Medicine, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266021, China.
³ Jiaozhou Maternal and Child Health Hospital, Qingdao 266300, China.
⁴ Thyroid & Breast Surgery, Hospital of Weifang Medical University, Weifang 261031, China.

Abstract

The minichromosome maintenance (MCM) protein family plays a key role in eukaryotic DNA replication and has been confirmed to be associated with the occurrence and progression of many tumors. However, the expression levels, functions, and prognostic values of MCMs in breast cancer (BC) have not been clearly and systematically explained. In this article, we studied the transcriptional levels of MCMs in BC based on the Oncomine database. Kaplan-Meier plotter was used to analyze prognostic value of MCMs in human BC patients. Furthermore, we constructed a MCM coexpression gene network and performed functional annotation analysis through DAVID to reveal the functions of MCMs and coexpressed genes. The data showed that the expression of MCM2-8 and MCM10 but not MCM1 and MCM9 was upregulated in BC. Kaplan-Meier plotter analysis revealed that high transcriptional levels of MCM2, MCM4-7, and MCM10 were significantly related to low relapse-free survival (RFS) in BC patients. In contrast, high levels of MCM1 and MCM9 predicted high RFS for BC patients. This study suggests that MCM2, MCM4-7, and MCM10 possess great potential to be valuable prognostic biomarkers for BC and that MCM1 and MCM9 may serve as potential treatment targets for BC patients.