ZBRK1, a zinc finger protein that interacts with breast cancer 1 (BRCA1) and KRAB-ZFP-associated protein 1 (KAP1), has been suggested to serve as a tumor suppressor via repression of tumor metastasis/invasion.
DNA microarray and immunohistochemical analyses have shown that most TNBCs fall within the basal-like histological subset of breast cancers, which frequently exhibit inactivation of the retinoblastoma tumor suppressor (Rb) and upregulation of the cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor p16(INK4a) (p16).
Trastuzumab, a humanized antibody directed against the Her2 receptor, induces the expression of p27(kip1), an intranuclear cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor in some breast cancer cells.
Taken together, our results point to an antiproliferative function of the unliganded ER alpha through its physical interactions with p21(WAF1) that may also explain the favorable prognosis of ER alpha-positive breast cancers.
We previously found (M. V. Blagosklonny, et al., Cancer Res., 57: 320-325, 1997) that exposure of human SkBr3 breast cancer and LNCaP prostate cancer cells to 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate (TPA) led to a growth arrest associated with the up-regulation of the cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor p21(WAF1/cIP1) and the inhibition of c-Myc expression.