identified as a potential breast cancer marker: evidence from bioinformatics analysis and basic experiments.

Background: Breast cancer (BC) is the leading cause of tumor-related death in women worldwide, but its pathogenesis is not clear. The efficient screening of new therapeutic targets for BC through bioinformatics and biological experimental techniques has become a hot topic in BC research.

Methods: The bioinformatics method was used to analyze the gene chips and obtain the hub genes, playing an important role in the development of BC. The biological processes (BP) involved in the hub genes were analyzed by Bingo, and the impact of each hub gene on disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) in BC patients was evaluated in the Kaplan-Meier Plotter database. The expression of , the hub gene with the greatest degree and having an effect on the prognosis of BC patients, was detected in BC cell lines and clinicopathological specimens. And was selected for further biological experiments and clinical prognosis verification.

Results: Ten hub genes including , the greatest degree genes, were found by bioinformatics analysis of BC gene chips. expressions in both BC cell lines and clinicopathological specimens were detected and the results showed that was significantly down-regulated in BC cell lines and tissues. After interfering with the expression of , it was found that the invasion and migration ability of MDA-MB-231 cell line was significantly enhanced . The clinical survival data of BC patients showed that patients with high expression had longer DFS.

Conclusions: may be a tumor suppressor gene in BC as it could regulate invasion and migration of BC cells and its expression level is related to the prognosis of BC patients. Nevertheless, further researches are still necessary to verify its role in BC so as to provide evidences for clinical guidance regarding diagnosis and treatment.