Objective: Menage a trois 1 (MAT1) is a targeting subunit of cyclin-dependent kinase-activating kinase and general transcription factor IIH kinase, which modulates cell cycle, transcription and DNA repair. Its dysregulation is responsible for diseases including cancers. To further explore the role of MAT1 in breast cancer, we investigated the pathways in which MAT1 might be involved, the association between MAT1 and molecular subtypes, and the role of MAT1 in clinical outcomes of breast cancer patients.
Methods: We conducted immunohistochemistry staining on tissue microarray and immunofluorescence staining on sections of MAT1 stable breast cancer cells. Also, we performed Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathway analysis, correlation analysis and prognosis analysis on public databases.
Results: MAT1 was involved in multiple pathways including normal physiology signaling and disease-related signaling. Furthermore, MAT1 positively correlated with the protein status of estrogen receptor and progesterone receptor, and was enriched in luminal-type and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-enriched breast cancer in comparison with basal-like subtype at both mRNA and protein levels. Correlation analysis revealed significant association between MAT1 mRNA amount and epithelial markers, mesenchymal markers, cancer stem cell markers, apoptosis markers, transcription markers and oncogenes. Consistently, the results of immunofluorescence stain indicated that MAT1 overexpression enhanced the protein abundance of epidermal growth factor receptor, vimentin, sex determining region Y-box 2 and sine oculis homeobox homolog 1. Importantly, Kaplan-Meier Plotter analysis reflected that MAT1 could serve as a prognostic biomarker predicting worse relapse-free survival and metastasis-free survival.
Conclusions: MAT1 is correlated with molecular subtypes and is associated with unfavorable prognosis for breast cancer patients.

Keywords: Menage a trois 1 (MAT1); breast cancer; molecular subtypes; prognosis; proliferation