Depletion of POLQ (DNA polymerase theta) has recently been shown to render tumour cells more sensitive to radiotherapy whilst having little or no effect on normal tissues. This finding led us to investigate whether tumours that overexpress POLQ are associated with an adverse outcome. We therefore correlated the clinical outcomes of two retrospective series of patients with early breast cancer with the expression levels of POLQ, as determined by microarray gene expression analysis. We found that a significant number of tumours overexpressed POLQ and that overexpression was correlated with ER negative disease (p=0.047) and high tumour grade (p=0.004), both of which are associated with poor clinical outcomes. POLQ overexpression was associated with poor relapse free survival rates on both univariate (HR 5.80; 95

作者：Geoff S, Higgins；Adrian L, Harris；Remko, Prevo；Thomas, Helleday；W Gillies, McKenna；Francesca M, Buffa

来源：Oncotarget 2010 年 1卷 3期