Early detection of breast cancer plays a key role in successful treatment and patient survival. The presence of cancer cells causes immune cells to undergo various phenotypic and functional changes and the affected immune cells kill cancer cells or promote proliferation and metastasis of cancer cells. Using peripheral blood cells (PBCs) for gene expression analysis is valuable to evaluate disease-associated and drug-response related genes. In this study, we aimed to explore the innate immune gene expression profile of PBCs in patients with breast cancer.

Material & methods: Whole blood samples were collected from 30 breast cancer patients and 42 healthy volunteers. The gene expression of PBCs was determined by RT-qPCR.

Results: A healthy sample was created using the total RNA of healthy volunteers. We investigated the expression of receptors and its ligands, transcription factors, cytokines, chemokines, interferon-stimulated and pro-oxidation genes related to the innate immune system in breast cancer and healthy samples. Deregulated expression of a few genes was found out in the blood of breast cancer patients compared to the healthy sample.

Conclusions: We have identified the genes in whole blood that classifies breast cancer patients and healthy women with good accuracy. These results suggested that the expression of innate immune genes in PBCs can be used for early detection of breast cancer and evaluation of efficiency treatment of this disease.