As one of the most common
breast cancer subtypes,
luminal A
breast cancer is sensitive to endocrine-based
therapy and insensitive to
chemotherapy. Patients with
luminal A subtype of
breast cancer have a relatively good prognosis compared with that of patients with other subtypes of
breast cancer. However, with the increased incidence in endocrine resistance and severe side effects, simple endocrine
therapy has become unsuitable for the treatment of
luminal A
breast cancer. Therefore, identifying novel therapeutic targets for
luminal A
breast cancer may accelerate the development of an effective therapeutic strategy. The bioinformatical analysis of the current study, which included KEGG and GO analyses of the GSE20437 dataset containing 24 healthy and 18
breast cancer tissue samples, identified key target genes associated with
breast cancer. Moreover, survival analysis results revealed that a low expression of BTG2 was significantly associated with the low survival rate of patients with
breast cancer, indicated that B-cell translocation gene 2 (BTG2) may be a potential target in
breast cancer. However, BTG2 may be
cancer type-dependent, as overexpression of BTG2 has been demonstrated to suppress the proliferation of pancreatic and
lung cancer cells, but promote the proliferation of
bladder cancer cells. Since the association between BTG2 and
luminal A-subtype
breast cancer remains unclear, it is important to understand the biological function of BTG2 in
luminal A
breast cancer. Based on the expression levels of
estrogen receptor,
progesterone receptor and human
epidermal growth factor receptor, MCF-7 cells were selected in the present study as a
luminal A
breast cancer cell type. MTT, Transwell invasion and wound healing assays revealed that overexpression of BTG2 suppressed the levels of MCF-7 cell proliferation, migration and invasion. In addition, the downregulation of BTG2 at the
mRNA and
protein level was also confirmed in
luminal A
breast tumor tissue, which was consistent with the results in vitro. These results indicated that BTG2 may act as an effective target for the treatment of
luminal A
breast cancer.