Background: The genotype of Fanconi Anemia complementation group M (FANCM) was previously found to be associated with breast cancer risk in several populations. Here, we studied the expression of FANCM and its correlation with clinical characteristics in Chinese patients with breast cancer.
Methods: We performed an immunohistochemical study of FANCM protein in clinical breast cancer tissues from 310 patients along with 44 adjacent tissues.
Results: FANCM protein level is lower in triple-negative breast cancer tissues than in other subtypes (P = 0.008). In addition, high FANCM expression correlated with pathology type IDC (P = 0.040), estrogen receptor positive (P < 0.001), progesterone receptor positive (P = 0.001), and low Ki-67 status (P = 0.003). Multivariate analysis revealed that FANCM status was an independent prognostic factor for overall survival (P = 0.017) in luminal B breast cancer.
Conclusions: FANCM levels are significantly associated with different subtypes of human breast cancer. Specifically, FANCM could play a role in the progression of luminal B breast cancer.
Keywords: Breast cancer; DNA repair; FANCM; Luminal B subtype cancer.