Biological and clinical implications of nicastrin expression in invasive breast cancer.

Nicastrin is an essential component of the gamma secretase (GS) enzyme complex, required for its synthesis and recognition of substrates for proteolytic cleavage. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether nicastrin has prognostic value or potential as a therapeutic target in breast cancer (BC). The suitability of nicastrin as a target in BC was assessed using BC tissue microarrays (TMAs) (n = 1050), and its biological role in vitro was evaluated in BC cell lines following gene silencing.