CXCR4 expression serves as a promising candidate target in the treatment of breast cancer

CXC motif chemokine receptor type 4 (CXCR4) has an association with normal and abnormal progression. Previous studies have demonstrated the involvement of CXCR4 in breast cancer (BC), particularly in promoting metastatic progression. However, most of the existing evidence originates from basic research. Our study aims to evaluate novel the expression profiles of CXCR4 in BC. Computerized literature search was done on the online accessible databases, including ONCOMINE, Kaplan-Meier plotter, TCGA database and Breast Cancer Gene-Expression Miner v4.3 to explore the expression profile and prognostic roles of CXCR4. CXCR4 overexpression was associated with BC versus normal control. Elevated CXCR4 expression predicted better PFS, but no survival rate benefit in BC patients. Moreover, there is a survival rate benefit with high expression of CXCR4 mRNA in the negative ER but the positive ER group. CXCR4 was more frequently overexpressed in BC patients with negative expression of ER and PR and negative expression of HER-2. For molecular subtypes analysis, higher expression of CXCR4 was associated with Basal-like and HER-2 subtypes than luminal A and luminal B subtypes. Moreover, we demonstrate a positive correlation between high expression of CXCR4 and low expression of LASP1 and EIF4A1 via gene correlation targeted analysis, which is consistent with the result among the triple-negative breast cancer patients. Our results suggest that CXCR4 can be used as a biological factor to predict the prognosis of BC patients, especially those with triple-negative breast cancer, and is also a tumor marker with potential value in the future treatment of BC.