Shugoshin-like protein 1 (SGO1) participated in the proper progression of mitosis. This fundamental role has indicated the importance of this gene in the pathogenesis of cancer as a disorder of mitotic cell division. A previous high throughput study of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) expression in lung cancer has identified aberrant expression of SGO1-antisense 1 (SGO1-AS1) in these specimens. In the current study, we quantified expression of SGO1 and SGO1-AS1 in 39 breast cancer tissues and their paired adjacent non-cancerous tissues (ANCTs). Expression of SGO1-AS1 was considerably decreased in tumoral tissues compared with ANCTs (expression ratio = 0.49, P value = 0.03). However, we could not identify significant difference in expression of SGO1 between these two sets of specimens (expression ratio = 2.9, P value = 0.2). Transcript quantities of SGO1-AS1 were associated with age at disease onset (P= 0.01). Expression of either gene was associated with hormone receptors status or clinical features such as grade and stage. There was an inverse correlation between expressions of genes in both sets of samples. Finally, transcript amounts of SGO1-AS1 could distinguish these two sets of samples with accuracy of 63% (P value = 0.03). Our results imply significance of SGO1-AS1 in breast cancer and necessitate conduction of mechanistic studies to find the molecular pathways in this regard.
Keywords: SGO1; SGO1-AS1; Shugoshin-like protein 1; breast cancer; lncRNA.