GLUT1/3/4 as novel biomarkers for the prognosis of human breast cancer

Background: Anomalous expression of glucose transporters (GLUTs) has been observed in a variety of tumor tissues. Although GLUT factors have been shown to have prognostic value for some cancer types, detailed bioinformatics investigation of the factors contributing to the prognostic prediction for patients with breast cancer (BC) has not yet been performed. Methods: In this study, we examined the transcription levels of GLUT1, GLUT3, and GLUT4 and their associations with prognostic clinical data in patients with BC from the ONCOMINE database, using gene expression profiling interactive analysis (GEPIA), Kaplan-Meier (KM) plotter, and cBioPortal online tools. Results: The transcription level of GLUT1 was significantly higher in the BC samples than in the normal tissues, whereas the levels of GLUT3 and GLUT4 were lower in the BC samples. The expression levels of GLUT1 and GLUT3 were associated with the cancer clinical stage. Consistently, survival analysis demonstrated that a high expression level of GLUT1 was associated with low relapse-free survival (RFS) in patients with BC, whereas high GLUT3 and GLUT4 levels predicted a longer RFS in these patients. Conclusions: Overall, these results suggest GLUT1 as an effective target of precision therapy, while GLUT3/4 are novel biomarkers for the prognosis of patients with BC.