Determination of new molecular markers (androgen receptor-RA and GLI1) in the diagnosis and prognosis of breast cancer

Although in the last decade, technological development has allowed to establish and understand the wide heterogeneity that exists in Breast Cancer (CS), this disease is located as the second type of female cancer worldwide. In CS the estrogen receptor is expressed in most tumors and has a broad prognostic utility and predictor of response to hormonal treatment. However, like estrogen receptor negative tumors, many of these cases do not respond to such treatment. Recent studies show that gene expression analysis can help classify tumors to define better treatments; However, access to these methodologies is very limited due to the high cost. Therefore, it is necessary to determine and standardize new markers that are easily accessible and that can give additional information for the classification and prognostic determination of patients, with respect to classical markers. Recent evidence suggests that within these markers could be found the Androgen Receptor (AR) and GLI1 since they have been shown to affect the growth of tumor cells. Thus, evaluating their expression levels and using molecular classification tools in patients with CS, will allow establishing associations between molecular subtypes of CS and the expression of GLI1 and RA, in order to postulate new tumor stratification strategies. Additionally, these analyses will help clarify the controversial role of RA and GLI1 by defining the prognostic utility of these genes as markers of molecular classification of CS.