Mina Kazempour - Department of Microbiology, Falavarjan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Falavarjan, Iran
Kamran Ghaedi - Division of Cellular and Molecular Biology, Department of Biology, Faculty of Sciences, Universityof Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran
Mahboobeh Madani - Department of Microbiology, Falavarjan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Falavarjan, Iran

Background: Breast cancer is the most common malignancy in women. Recently, studies have shown upregulation of miR-155 in various cancers explaining its oncogenic role. This study aims to estimate miR-155 expression and its targetome analysis for deciphering the molecular functions of miR-155 in breast cancer.Material and Methods: In silico analyses of miR-155 targetome in breast cancer using Unigene database was examined. DAVID database was recruited to conduct molecular pathways analyses. RTqPCR was implemented for analysis of miR-155 expression in 40 breast cancer samples. Incidence of vaginal candidiasis was testified in these patients by means of mycology experiments.Results: KEGG signaling pathways were revealed as the most statistically relevant pathways with miR- 155 targetome such as pathway in cancer (P-Value=2.4E-6) , cell cycle (p-value=5.3E-2) , apoptosis (P-Value=7.6E-2) and wnt signaling pathway (p-value=7.0E-2) . miR-155 can performseveral tasks during first phases of tumorigenesis of breast cancer such as prevention of apoptosis/angiogenesis and induction of cell survival/proliferation. We observed miR-155 was upregulated in patients. The isolated Candida from these patients were C.glabrata, C.tropicalis and C.krusei.Conclusion: miR-155 could exert an oncogenic function through targeting several tumor suppressor proteins expressed in breast tissues. There is a relation between incidence of breast cancer and candida infection.

Breast cancer, miR-155, signaling pathway, candida