Figure 1.

Heat shock protein 27 (HSP27) plays a negative prognostic role in human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-positive breast cancer (BC). (A) The relapse-free survival rate of patients with different HSP27 expression levels was assessed through a survival analysis using a KM plotter (http://kmplot.com/analysis). A total of 251 patients were included in the analysis. * p = 0.046, log rank test. (B) The distant metastasis–free survival probability of HSP27-high and -low patients was analyzed using KM plotter. A total of 119 patients were involved in the assessment. ** p = 0.0041, log rank test. (C) A total of 114 HER2⁺ patients from GSE50948 were classified into two groups. Those with a log2 robust multi-array average expression value of HSPB1 in the top 30% (n = 34) were assigned to the HSP27^High group, and those in the bottom 30% of HSPB1 values (n = 34) were categorized as the HSP27^Low group. Student’s t-test, *** p < 0.001. (D) The pathological complete response (pCR) and residual disease (RD) rates of the HSP27^High and HSP27^High groups were calculated. The patients in the HSP27^High group were more likely to remain in RD status, regardless of their regimen subtype.