VEGF-C and p53 Gene Expression in the Normal and Neoplastic Mammary Gland of Canines: A Pilot Study

p53 is a tumor suppressor protein that plays an essential role in controlling the cell and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is one of the most strong and specific angiogenic factors. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of p53 and VEGF-C gene expression in the neoplastic and normal mammary gland of canine as an animal model. Elleven benign and malignant specimens and 5 normal specimens were collected. After RNA extraction and cDNA synthesis, relative quantification of p53 and VEGF-C genes were accomplished by Real-time quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) based on use of β-actin as a reference gene. The relative mRNA expression of the p53 and VEGF-C genes were analyzed by GLM procedure of SAS software v9.2. The results indicated that the VEGF-C and p53 mRNA expression in neoplastic specimens was over-and down-expressed respectively as compared with normal specimens and p53 mRNA expression was significantly negatively associated with VEGF-C (~4 fold) in neoplastic specimens (P <0.01). The findings emphasized that simultaneous evaluation of p53 and VEGF-C expression can be used as tumor biomarker for early diagnosis of malignancy in canine. Furthermore, RT-qPCR is a rapid and sensitive method to for monitoring and investigating of suspicious canine at the beginning stage of malignancy and may provide an alternative explanation for deregulated p53 signalling in breast cancer.