Finally, the greatest utility of p27 may lie in the information it sheds on the biology of aberrant growth regulation in breast cancer and the potential to use this in the generation of novel therapeutic strategies.
These data indicate that p27 mutations are a rare event in breast cancer, but may play an important role in the development of a minority of these cancers.
Further studies are now necessary to elucidate the cause of p27 gene overexpression in breast carcinoma and in particular to determine whether it corresponds to chromosomal rearrangements in the 14q32 region and/or to induction by interferons of the alpha/beta type.