CGH analysis of ductal carcinoma of the breast with basaloid/myoepithelial cell differentiation

Abstract

2–18% of ductal carcinoma-No Special Type (NST) are reported to express basal cell keratin 14 and such tumours may have a different metastatic pattern and prognosis. We performed immunohistochemistry for cytokeratins 19 (luminal) and 14 (basal) on 92 ductal carcinoma-NST. Those tumours showing CK14 expression were further characterized by immunohistochemistry for myoepithelial cell phenotype and analysed by comparative genomic hybridization. The 7 cases of ductal carcinoma-NST exhibiting a basal cell phenotype were all grade III tumours and showed a molecular cytogenetic profile similar to more conventional myoepithelial cell carcinomas. Therefore it appears that grade III invasive ductal carcinomas contain a subset of tumours with specific morphological and cytogenetic characteristics, and probably prognosis for the patient. © 2001 Cancer Research Campaign http://www.bjcancer.com

Expression of basal keratins and vimentin in breast cancers of young women correlates with adverse pathologic parameters

“…This may explain the small number of cases showing positive immunoreactivity for the basal cytokeratins CK14 and CK5/6 in our study. 5 It has been reported that between 2-18% of infiltrative ductal cancers show expression for CK14, 18 and our finding of CK14 positivity in 11.2% of breast cancers from our young women lies within this range. Fewer cases were reactive for CK5/6 as compared with CK14, which could be related to differences in sensitivity of the antibodies, as noted in our study on papillary breast lesions.…”

The proteins FABP7 and OATP2 are associated with the basal phenotype and patient outcome in human breast cancer

“…In conclusion, the study has demonstrated the biological, pathological and clinical features of FABP7 and OATP2 protein expression in human breast carcinoma and with respect to FABP7 particularly its relationship and significance in BP breast cancer [12,13,15,18,22,23,25,28,43,54]. These novel biomarkers have significant associations, both independently and within the BP, on tumour behaviour, expression of other biomarkers, and clinical outcome.…”

“…The basal-like type or BP of breast cancer has been subject to extensive investigation in recent years, mainly due to its association with poor patient survival [13,15,22,23,43,44]. Despite this interest, there is currently no robust definition for designation of "basal-like" or BP breast cancer in routine clinical practice, furthermore tumours with a BP are also now recognised to exhibit heterogeneity [14,23].…”

“…Furthermore the expression of basal CKs in breast cancer and their association with poor prognosis has confirmed by several studies [8][9][10][11]. However, basal-like class of tumours have recently received much attention after their identification in gene expression profiling (GEP) studies as a molecularly distinct subtype of breast cancer Although patients with basal-like tumours are generally characterised by shorter disease free survival, high mortality rate and experience a unique pattern of distant metastasis [12,13], it must be noted that this is not always the case, as some authors have reported a heterogeneity within basal like tumours and other studies have failed to show an association with poorer outcome [14][15][16]. Identification of the basal subset can be achieved by GEP or an immunophenotype (IHC).…”

“…Most IHC based definitions use positive expression of basal CKs as the basis to define the basal group [12,13,15,[25][26][27] as additional markers have so far failed to refine further the identification of poor survival cases.. Other authors argue that basal CKs are not always expressed by the basal-like group of tumours identified by gene analyses, and hence novel markers must be incorporated into its definition [28].…”