THE PROGNOSTIC VALUE OF ALPHA-THYMOSINS IN BREAST-CANCER

The prognosis of breast cancel is of major clinical importance and sev er al histopathological, biochemical and immunological variables have been reported to be useful prognostic factors. In the present study, w e investigated the clinical significance of the levels of alpha-thymos ins in relation to established prognostic factors, both in breast canc er and nonmalignant breast lesions. alpha-thymosin levels were measure d in breast tissue extracts by specific radioimmunoassays (RIAs) devel oped for human prothymosin alpha (ProT alpha) and parathymosin alpha ( ParaT alpha) and were found to be significantly higher (up to 17,2-fol d) in malignant but not in benign breast lesions, as compared to the v alues of the neighbouring tissues. When a thymosin levels of the tumor samples were correlated with various known prognostic parameters a st atistically significant correlation (p<0,05) was observed between the levels of ProT alpha status of the patient. An association between Pro T alpha levels with increase in risk of death from breast cancer was a lso noticed. These results suggest that the expression of alpha-thymos ins in human breast cancer a) depends on the proliferation status of t he tumor; b) associates with established prognostic factors describing the metastatic potential of the tumor and c) is related to the overal l survival of the patient. The fact that such relationships hold only for cancel tissues encourages the future use of alpha-thymosins as pot ent prognostic factors in breast cancer.