MELK and breast cancer: In univariate analysis, patients with breast cancer with tumors expressing high mRNA levels of MELK had significantly shorter 5-year OS (62.7% vs. 84.3%; P = 0.0002), PFS (51.8% vs. 73.3%; P = 0.0112), and DMFS (53.5% vs. 75.3%; P = 0.0081) than patients with tumors expressing low mRNA levels of MELK (Fig. 1C; Table 2).