Abstract Background In terms of global incidence and mortality, breast cancer continues to surpass all other cancers affecting women. Methods To explore the role of miR-596, qRT-PCR was applied to measure its expression in tissue and cell samples from 137 enrolled subjects. The regulatory interaction between miR-596 and EIF5AL1 was verified by dual-luciferase reporter assays. CCK-8 and Transwell assays were utilized to respectively measure the proliferation, migration, and invasion capabilities of the two breast cancer cell lines, MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231. Results A significant downregulation of miR-596 was observed in breast cancer tissues and cell lines (all P < 0.001). Clinically, reduced miR-596 expression was associated with advanced TNM stage, lymph node metastasis, and inferior overall survival ( P < 0.05). EIF5AL1 was validated as a direct target gene of miR-596, and their expression levels were inversely correlated in clinical samples ( r = -0.801, P < 0.001). Reintroduction of miR-596 markedly suppressed the proliferation, migration, and invasion of cancer cells, effects that were largely reversed by overexpressing EIF5AL1 (all P < 0.001). Conclusion In breast cancer, miR-596 suppresses malignancy and predicts prognosis by targeting EIF5AL1 . Thus, therapeutic modulation of this axis offers novel avenues for treatment and risk assessment.
Huang et al. (2026) studied this question.