Breast cancer (BRCA) is the leading cause of cancer-related death among women [
1,
2]. The incidence rate of BRCA among Chinese women increases rapidly with life style changes [
3]. Even with the advances of current multidisciplinary therapies, including mastectomy, radiotherapy, and adjuvant chemotherapy, in treating BRCA, no effective systemic therapy has been established for metastatic BRCA. The overall 5-year survival rate for patients with aggressive BRCA is less than 25% after receiving systemic treatment [
4,
5]. Therefore, efficient and promising therapies must be explored to reduce the risk of BRCA.
2-(4-Morpholinoanilino)-6-cyclohexylaminopurine (reversine) is a small synthetic purine analogue. Reversine primarily promotes myotube dedifferentiation derived from the murine myoblast cell line C2C12 [
6,
7]. Reversine can facilitate the in vitro and in vivo differentiation of human fibroblasts into skeletal muscle cells [
8]. Thus, reversine can reprogram somatic cells to a state of increased plasticity that can be manipulated to direct differentiation in different cell types. On the other hand, reversine displays an anti-cancer activity in various cancer cell lines, such as human acute or chronic myeloid leukemia cells [
9,
10], multiple myeloma cells [
11], human thyroid cancers [
12], oral squamous carcinoma cells [
13], human renal carcinoma cells [
14], and urothelial carcinoma cells [
15]. In BCRA, reversine induces cell cycle arrest, polyploidy, and apoptosis in human BRCA cells [
16]. Reversine contributes to the growth inhibition of human BRCA cells through cell cycle arrest, polyploidy, and/or apoptosis induction [
16]. However, the potential role of reversine as a novel therapeutic agent for the treatment of BRCA remains unclear. Recently, aurora kinases are new cancer therapy targets [
17‐
19]. Furthermore, in Sessa’s study, reversine has been identified as a novel class of ATP-competitive aurora kinase inhibitor by forming the reversine-Aurora B kinase complex [
9]. Therefore, we examined if reversine can inhibit BRCA cell lines by modulating aurora kinase B (Aurora B). Unexpectedly, the activity of reversine to aurora kinase in BCRA has not been reported. The relationship between AURKB and survival rate in BRCA has not been reported.
Therefore, in the present study, we first analyzed the role of reversine on three BRCA cell lines, including the TNBC subtype, 4T1, MDA-MB-231, and luminal subtype MCF-7. We then searched the gene AURKB expression in normal and BRCA tissues and its expressions in different BRCA cell types, including the Luminal, HER2, and TNBC subtypes. Furthermore, we analyzed the effect of AURKB gene level on the overall patient survival based on public databases. Finally, we analyzed the potential microRNAs affected by reversine for future interference experiment.