ASAP1 Expression in Invasive Breast Cancer and Its Prognostic Role

Breast cancer is a major global health burden with high morbidity and mortality rates. Previous studies have reported that increased expression of ASAP1 is associated with poor prognosis in various types of cancer. This study was conducted on 452 breast cancer patients who underwent surgery at Hanyang University Hospital, Seoul, South Korea. Data on clinicopathological characteristics including molecular pathologic markers were collected. Immunohistochemical staining of ASAP1 expression level were used to classify patients into high and low groups. In total, 452 cases low ASAP1 expression group was associated with significantly worse recurrence-free survival (p = 0.029). In ER-positive cases (n = 280), the low ASAP1 expression group was associated with significantly worse overall survival (p = 0.039) and recurrence-free survival (p = 0.029). In multivariate cox analysis, low ASAP1 expression was an independent significant predictor of poor recurrence-free survival in the overall patient group (hazard ratio = 2.566, p = 0.002) and ER-positive cases (hazard ratio = 4.046, p = 0.002). In the analysis of the TCGA dataset, the low-expression group of ASAP1 protein demonstrated a significantly poorer progression-free survival (p = 0.005). This study reports that low ASAP1 expression was associated with worse recurrence-free survival in invasive breast cancer.