Prognostic and clinicopathological value of SOX10 protein expression in breast cancer: a systematic review and meta- analysis

Background: Recently, many studies were conducted to explore the role of SRY-box transcription factor 10 (SOX10) expression in clinical progression and prognosis of breast cancer, but the results remained controversial. In order to clarify the association between SOX10 expression and breast cancer, we conducted the meta-analysis. Methods The eligible studies were obtained by conducting a thorough search of various databases, including Embase, PubMed, Wan Fang, Chinese Biomedical Literature, Medline, Science Direct, Scopus, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI). Odd ratios (OR) or hazard ratios (HR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI) were used to estimate the associations between SOX10 expression and clinical features as well as overall survival time of breast cancer. The meta-analysis was conducted using STATA 14.0 software. Results The meta-analysis included 19 eligible studies, which involved 4,899 breast cancer patients. The results showed that SOX10 overexpression in breast cancer tissues was significantly associated with a shorter overall survival time (OR = 1.63, 95%CI = 1.25-2.00, P  < 0.05), with no significant heterogeneity found (I 2  = 41.7%, P  = 0.13). In terms of clinical characteristics, SOX10 overexpression was significantly associated with TNM-stage (OR = 2.61, 95%CI = 1.72–3.95, P  < 0.05) and grade (OR = 5.16, 95%CI = 2.62–10.17, P  < 0.05) of breast cancer. Furthermore, SOX10 overexpression was found to predict a higher incidence rate of triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) (OR = 34.46, 95%CI = 11.70-101.48, P  < 0.05) and lower expression of human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 (HER2) (OR = 0.20, 95%CI = 0.12–0.34, P  < 0.05), estrogen receptor (ER) (OR = 0.11, 95%CI = 0.02–0.57, P  < 0.05), and progesterone receptor (PR) (OR = 0.12, 95%CI = 0.08–0.19, P  < 0.05). Conclusion The study found that higher expression of the SOX10 was significantly associated with advanced progression and worse prognosis of breast cancer, particularly in TNBC. Therefore, SOX10 expression could be a promising predictor for evaluating the clinical progression and prognosis of breast cancer.