Introduction
tumor, breast cancer, malignancy, Breast cancer, cancer deaths, TCGA, Cancer
TUMOR, INFILTRATION, BREAST CANCER, BREAST CANCER, CANCER
Breast cancer has been the most common global malignancy as well as the leading cause of cancer deaths [In 2013, Richard A. Young and his colleagues firstly proposed the concept of super-enhancers (SEs), which were a class of cis-regulatory elements with super transcriptional activation characteristics [In this study, we obtained RNA-sequence and clinicopathological data of breast cancer patients from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. Then, through a comprehensive bioinformatics analysis, we established a risk score system with 6 prognosis SERGs and validated it by testing set. Meanwhile, enrichment analyses were conducted between the low-risk and high-risk groups to reveal the potential mechanisms and pathways. In addition, analyses based on tumor infiltration immune level, immune checkpoints and chemotactic factors were applied to investigate the associations between SERGs signature and tumor immune microenvironment (TIME). Furthermore, reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR), Western Blot, immunohistochemistry (IHC) and functional experiments (such as Cell Counting Kit-8 (CCK-8) assay, cellular migration assay and cell cycle assay) were all adopted to validate the expression level and significant clinical value of ZIC2 (one of the risk genes in the prognostic model) in cell lines and tissues of breast cancer.