Correlation between CA12 and TFF3 and their prediction value of neoadjuvant chemotherapy response in breast cancer

What is known and Objective Compared with other molecular subtypes, hormone receptor‐positive breast cancer often shows worse neoadjuvant chemotherapy efficacy. This study aims to explore the relationship between the oestrogen receptor (ER)‐related genes carbonic anhydrase 12 (CA12) and trefoil factor 3 (TFF3) and their predictive value of neoadjuvant chemotherapy for breast cancer. Methods We investigated the relationships between CA12, TFF3 and ER status and their predictive value of anthracycline‐taxane neoadjuvant chemotherapy in 115 female breast cancer patients via real‐time polymerase chain reaction (RT‐PCR) and 4 GEO datasets: GSE41998, GSE25065, GSE20194 and GSE20271. Then, the effects of CA12 and TFF3 on the chemotherapy drugs doxorubicin and docetaxel were verified in vitro in the breast cancer cell lines MCF‐7 and BT474. Results and Discussion The GEO datasets and RT‐PCR results showed that the relative expression of both CA12 and TFF3 was higher in oestrogen receptor‐positive samples compared with the other samples (p