Data from Hypoxia-Inducible Factor-2α Correlates to Distant Recurrence and Poor Outcome in Invasive Breast Cancer

Differential regulation as well as target gene specificity of the two hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF)-α subunits HIF-1α and HIF-2α in various tumors and cell lines have been suggested. In breast cancer, the prognostic significance of HIF-1α is not clear-cut and that of HIF-2α is largely unknown. Using IHC analyses of HIF-1α, HIF-2α, and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) expression in a tissue microarray of invasive breast cancer specimens from 512 patients, we investigated the expression patterns of the 2 HIF-α subunits in relation to established clinicopathologic variables, VEGF expression, and survival. HIF-1α and HIF-2α protein levels and their effect on survival were additionally analyzed in a second cohort of 179 patients. To evaluate the individual role of each subunit in the hypoxic response and induction of VEGF, HIF-α protein and HIF-α and VEGF mRNA levels were further studied in cultured breast cancer cells after hypoxic induction and/or knockdown of HIF-α subunits by siRNA by Western blot and Quantitative Real-Time PCR techniques. We showed that although HIF-1α and HIF-2α protein levels in breast cancer specimens were not interrelated, high levels of both HIF-1α and HIF-2α associated to high VEGF expression. HIF-2α expression was an independent prognostic factor associated to reduced recurrence-free and breast cancer–specific survival, whereas HIF-1α did not exhibit these correlations. In cultured cells, acute hypoxia induced both HIF-proteins. At prolonged hypoxia, HIF-2α remained accumulated, whereas HIF-1α protein levels decreased, in agreement with the oxygen level and time-dependent induction of HIFs recently reported in neuroblastoma. [Cancer Res 2008;68(22):9212–20]