Predictive significance of HIF-1α, Snail, and PD-L1 expression in breast cancer.

Currently, the prediction of breast cancer (BC) effectiveness to drug treatment is based on determining the expression level of steroid hormone receptors and human epidermal growth factor receptor type 2 (HER2). However, significant differences in individual response to drug treatment require the search for new predictive markers. Here, by comprehensively examining HIF-1α, Snail, and PD-L1 expression in BC tumor tissue, we demonstrate that high levels of these markers correlate with unfavorable factors of BC prognosis: the presence of regional and distant metastases and lymphovascular and perineural invasion.