MOLECULAR EVALUATION OF MMP9 IN IRAQI BREAST CANCER PATIENTS.

Breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer and the leading cause of cancer deaths in females worldwide. One of the main challenges in mammary cancer research is now to identify key proteins modulating tumor invasion, which can serve as early markers for invasive tumors as well as new drug targets. High level of MMP-9 expression in breast cancer is positively correlated with enhanced tumor cell invasion and metastasis and with enhanced progression and poorer prognosis. This study involved collection of 70 tissue samples after surgery 30 samples for patients and 40 samples for control. The study revealed that the percentage of patients that gave positive result for gene expression of MMP9 was 46.66% while the percentage of control samples that gave positive gene expression for MMP9 was 62.5%. This study found an increase in MMP9 gene expression in cancer patients. The cancer cells are expressing MMP9 in 5.263 fold higher than the expression of MMP9 in the cells of control samples.