Abstract: Expression and Clinical Significance of FATS in Human Breast Cancer TissueJun ZHANG1, Xifeng ZHANG1, Li QIU1, Lin GU2, Lujun ZHAO3, Zheng LI1Correspondence to: Zheng LI, E-mail: zhengli@tijmu.edu.cn1Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Tianjin Medical University Cancer Institute and Hospital, Tianjin 300060, China2The Second Department of Breast Oncosurgery, Tianjin Medical University Cancer Institute and Hospital, Tianjin 300060, China3Department of Radiation Therapy, Tianjin Medical University Cancer Institute and Hospital, Tianjin 300060, ChinaThis study was supported by Funds from the 973 Project, Ministry of Science and Technology of China (2009CB526407), and TianjinMunicipal Foundation of Science and Technology (10JCZDJC18600)Abstract Objective: To investigate the level of FATS mRNA in breast cancer and paired normal tissues, and to probe the func-tion of FATS in breast cancer. Methods: The level of the FATS gene expression in 156 breast cancer patients was determined by quanti-tative real-time reverse transcription PCR ( RT-PCR ), and the relationship between the expression level and prognosis of these patientswas explored. Results: The results of quantitative real-time RT-PCR analysis showed that the FATS expression was significantly lowerin cancer tissue than in the paired paraneoplastic tissue ( P = 0.003 ). The low expression of FATS was correlated with high histologicalgrades ( P = 0.01 ), and patients with low expression of FATS showed poorer disease-free survival ( P = 0.036 ). Multivariate analysisindicated that FATS expression was an independent prognostic factor for breast cancer ( odds ratio, 0.549; 95% confidence interval,0.308 to 0.977; P = 0.041 ). Conclusion: FATS expression is clinically significant and appears to be an new independent marker forbreast cancer.Keywords Breast cancer; Prognosis; FATS; mRNA expression