<b>Methods:</b> We analyzed the expression levels of EZH2 and TET1 in TCGA and our own breast cancer patient cohort, and tested their correlation with patient survival.
Our work establishes TET1 as a potential oncogene that contributes to aberrant hypomethylation in cancer and suggests that TET1 could serve as a druggable target for therapeutic intervention.<b>Significance:</b> This study addresses a critical gap in knowledge of how and why methylation is prognostic in breast cancer and shows how this information can be used to stratify patients with TNBC for targeted therapy.<i></i>.
Taken together, these findings indicate that promoter hypermethylation may contribute to the downregulation of TET1 and could be used as a promising marker for diagnosis in patients with breast cancer metastasis.
Our study indicates that EBC patients with decreased expression of TET1 mRNA had worse OS and that the levels of TET3 and TDG mRNAs were independent prognostic factors for patients who received anthracycline chemotherapy.
These results implicate the HMGA2-TET1-HOX signaling pathway in the epigenetic regulation of human breast cancer and highlight the importance of targeting methylation in specific subpopulations as a potential therapeutic strategy.