However, in some cases, such as breast cancer and lymphoma, its high expression level correlates with aggressive subtypes of cancer, suggesting that galectin-7 may have a dual role in cancer progression.
In this issue, we will focus on the physiological functions of galectin-7 in epithelia and present the alterations of galectin-7 expression in carcinomas with the aim to describe its possible functions in tumour progression.
Taken together, our data provide an explanation to the observed high galectin-7 expression levels in cancer cells and suggest that galectin-7 could be part of a common pathway used by mutant p53 to promote cancer progression.
In this article, we review the data concerning expression and roles of galectin-7 in cancer and propose a comprehensive view of its contribution during cancer progression.