Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women worldwide. Estrogen signaling pathways have been identified as efficient targets of breast cancer therapy, giv en their key role in promoting breast tumor growth. Agents blocking estrogen-mediated pathways are routinely used in clinical applications in patients displaying estrogen-sensitive breast cancer subtypes ; however intrinsic or acquired resistance to treatment often occurs or develops, thus limiting their efficacy. This limitation has highlighted an imperative need to identify new predictive biomarkers. Recent findings have highlighted a role for the Liver Kinase B1 (LKB1) in breast cancer tumorigenesis. LKB1 is a serine/threonine kinase mutated in Peutz-Jeghers syndrome (PJS), implicated in many cellular processes including energy metabolism, cell polarization and cell cycle arrest and has also been shown to play an essential role as a tumor suppressor gene by negatively regulating the mTOR pathway. This review provides an overview of previous findings and ongoing research on LKB1, and substantiates the use of this kinase as a potential prognostic and predictive biomarker of breast cancer .
Breast cancer (BC) is the most common cancer in women worldwide. In 2012, breast cancer was reported to cause the death of more than 522,000 women by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. Siegel et al. found that BC accounts for 29% of all new cancers in women in 2015 [
Despite the fact that ERα is a standard predictive marker used to prescribe endocrine therapy, about 40% of these patients initially display or eventually become resistant to treatment [
Breast cancers can be classified into several subtypes based on their epidemiological risk factors, molecular markers and response to systemic and local therapies. Norum et al. presented an overview of the intrinsic molecular subtypes of breast cancer, as well as their prognostic and therapeutic implications [