Nicola Tinari

Galectins and their ligands: amplifiers, silencers or tuners of the inflammatory response?

Recent evidence has implicated galectins and their ligands as master regulators of immune cell homeostasis. Whereas some members of this family, such as galectin-3, behave as amplifiers of the inflammatory cascade, others, such as galectin-1, trigger homeostatic signals to shut off T-cell effector functions. These carbohydrate-binding proteins, identified by shared consensus amino acid sequences and affinity for beta-galactoside-containing sugars, participate in the homeostasis of the inflammatory response, either by regulating cell survival and signaling, influencing cell growth and chemotaxis, interfering with cytokine secretion, mediating cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions or influencing tumor progression and metastasis. The current wealth of new information promises a future scenario in which individual members of the galectin family or their ligands will be used as powerful anti-inflammatory mediators and selective modulators of the immune response.

High expression of 90K (Mac-2 BP) is associated with poor survival in node-negative breast cancer patients not receiving adjuvant systemic therapies

90K (Mac‐2 BP) expression was evaluated by immunohistochemistry in paraffin‐embedded tissue from a consecutive series of lymph‐node negative breast cancer patients who did not receive adjuvant systemic treatment. An independent series of patients served as validation set. The association of 90K expression with risk of recurrence and death was examined in survival analyses together with known prognostic factors. High levels of 90K expression (IHC score > 8) were observed in 43 (25.3%) of 170 tumors examined. We found elevated risks of distant recurrence and overall mortality in patients with high 90K expression compared with patients with low 90K expression in their tumors. This increase persisted after adjusting for other prognostic factors in multivariate analysis (hazard ratio = 4.084; p < 0.001 for recurrence; hazard ratio = 4.298; p < 0.001 for death). These findings were confirmed in the validation set. Therefore, evaluation of 90K expression may be beneficial to identify lymph‐node negative breast cancer patients at lower risk of disease recurrence and death.