Over the past three decades, numerous patients with
breast cancer succumbed to
cancer metastasis and recurrence, while, the exact mechanisms underlying this
malignancy, and the potential
biomarkers for prognosis prediction remain elusive. It was previously demonstrated that phosphorylated RAC-α
serine/threonine-protein kinase (pAkt) and
Beclin 1 was associated with
cancer metastasis, and recurrence. Thus far, the expression patterns of pAkt and
Beclin 1 in
breast cancer tissues, and their associations with the prognosis of invasive ductal
breast cancer remain inconclusive, which may be due to various factors, including ethnicity and pathological types. In the present study, a total of 90 Chinese female patients with invasive ductal
breast cancer between June 1999 and August 2002 were enrolled at Shanghai First People's Hospital (Shanghai, China). The patients were followed up from 5 months to 13.5 years for survival analysis. The expressional levels of pAkt and
Beclin 1 in invasive ductal
breast cancer tissues, and the normal paracancerous tissues were measured by immunohistochemistry. Associations with prognosis following surgery were further evaluated using Cox regression analysis. In 90 invasive ductal
breast cancer samples, pAkt was detected in 17 (18.9%) samples and
Beclin 1 in 33 (36.7%) samples, but both were not detected in any of the paracancerous samples. Survival analysis revealed that pAkt expression carried a tendency to predict a shorter disease-free survival (DFS) in patients with invasive ductal
breast cancer. Additionally,
Beclin 1 expression was not significantly associated with survival. Furthermore, univariate Cox regression analysis demonstrated that pAkt expression was negatively associated with DFS and overall survival. Multivariate Cox regression analysis indicated that pAkt expression was an independent risk factor associated with poor prognosis in patients with invasive ductal
breast cancer (all P<0.05). pAkt may be used as a potential prognostic
biomarker in Chinese women with invasive ductal
breast cancer.