upregulation of rhoxf2 and odf4 expression in breast cancer tissues

objective: during the past decade, the importance of biomarker discovery has been highlighted in many aspects of cancer research. biomarkers may have a role in early detection of cancer, prognosis and survival evaluation as well as drug response. cancer-testis antigens (ctas) have gained attention as cancer biomarkers because of their expression in a wide variety of tumors and restricted expression in testis. the aim of this study was to find putative biomarkers for breast cancer. materials and methods: in this applied-descriptive study, the expression of 4 ctas, namely acrosin binding protein (acrbp), outer dense fiber 4 (odf4), rhox homeobox family member 2 (rhoxf2) and spermatogenesis associated 19 (spata19) were analyzed at the transcript level in two breast cancer lines (mcf-7 and mda-mb-231), 40 invasive ductal carcinoma samples and their adjacent normal tissues as well as 10 fibroadenoma samples by means of quantitative real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (rt-pcr). results: all four genes were expressed in both cell lines. expression of odf4 and rhoxf2 was detected in 62.5% and 60% of breast cancer tissues but in 22.5 and 17.5% of normal tissues examined respectively. the expression of both rhoxf2 and odf4 was upregulated in cancerous tissues compared with their normal adjacent tissues by 3.31- and 2.96-fold respectively. the expression of both genes was correlated with her2/neu overexpression. rhoxf2 expression but not odf4 was correlated with higher stages of tumors. however, no significant association was seen between expression patterns and estrogen and progesterone receptors status. conclusion: odf4 and rhoxf2 are proposed as putative breast cancer biomarkers at the transcript level. however, their expression at protein level should be evaluated in future studies.