Abstract
Breast cancer (BC) is one of the most common malignant cancers in females worldwide and greatly threatens women's health. The C-type lectin domain family 10 member A (CLEC10A) is a member of the C-type lectin receptor family that has been previously reported to promote the antitumor activity of immune cells. In the present study, the potential prognostic value of CLEC10A expression in BC was assessed using data from The Cancer Genome Atlas online database. Differences in the mRNA expression levels of CLEC10A between BC and normal tissues were then analyzed using the Tumor Immune Estimation Resource (TIMER) platform and the University of Alabama at Birmingham Cancer data analysis portal. Reverse transcription-quantitative PCR was performed to validate the results of this analysis. The Kaplan-Meier plotter database was used to evaluate the association between the mRNA expression levels of CLEC10A and clinical prognosis of BC. Based on the association between the mRNA expression levels of CLEC10A and the tumor immune microenvironment, the TIMER platform and the Tumor and Immune System Interaction Database website were utilized to assess the correlation between CLEC10A expression and the degree of tumor immune cell infiltration. The present study revealed that CLEC10A expression was significantly lower in BC tissues compared with that in normal tissues, which was in turn associated with poorer clinical outcomes. This suggested that lower CLEC10A expression levels were associated with unfavorable prognosis in BC. In addition, the expression level of CLEC10A was found to be positively associated with the level of different tumor-infiltrating immune cells in BC, including CD8 T cells, B cells, macrophages and NK cells which, was in turn closely correlated with some gene markers such as CD19, CD8A, KIR2DS4 and PTGS2. These results suggest that the relationship between lower CLEC10A expression level and poor prognosis in BC may be due to the role of CLEC10A in the tumor immune microenvironment. In conclusion, CLEC10A may be a potential biomarker that can be used to efficiently predict prognosis in patients with BC.