This observation suggests that dopamine receptors may be activated in breast cancers, and is the first time to our knowledge that dopamine has been directly detected in human breast tumors, which could inform future investigation into DRD2 as a therapeutic target for breast cancer.
Expression analysis indicated that miR-4301 was inversely correlated with DRD2 expression in breast cancer specimens. qRT-PCR showed that miR-4301 negatively regulated DRD2 expression.
Furthermore, SNPs of the genes that contribute to alcohol behavior, DRD3 (rs167770), DRD2 (rs10891556), and SLC6A4 (rs140701), were also associated with an increased risk of breast cancer.