Dendritic Cell Subpopulations Are Associated with Morphological Features of Breast Ductal Carcinoma In Situ

Abstract

Ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) is the preinvasive form of breast cancer (BC). It is disputed whether all cases of DCIS require extensive treatment as the overall risk of progression to BC is estimated at 40%. Therefore, the crucial objective for researchers is to identify DCIS with significant risk of transformation into BC. Dendritic cells (DC) are professional antigen presenting cells and as such play a pivotal role in the formation of immune cells that infiltrate in breast tumors. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between the density of DCs with different superficial antigens (CD1a, CD123, DC-LAMP, DC-SIGN) and various histopathological characteristics of DCIS. Our evaluation indicated that CD123+ and DC-LAMP+ cells were strongly associated with maximal tumor size, grading and neoductgenesis. Together with CD1a+ cells, they were negatively correlated with hormonal receptors expression. Furthermore, the number of DC-LAMP+ cells was higher in DCIS with comedo necrosis, ductal spread, lobular cancerization as well as comedo-type tumors, while CD1a+ cells were abundant in cases with Paget disease. We concluded that different subpopulations of DCs relate to various characteristics of DCIS. Of the superficial DCs markers, DC-LAMP seems particularly promising as a target for further research in this area.

Dendritic Cell Subpopulations Are Associated with Prognostic Characteristics of Breast Cancer after Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy—An Observational Study

“…Additionally, we demonstrated that DC-LAMP + DCs are prevalent in larger tumors with higher nuclear grade and lower expression of ER and PR. Consequently, DCIS with features of neoductgenesis were infiltrated with larger amounts of DC-LAMP + DCs [36]. However, our current findings suggest that the population of DC-LAMP + DCs could not be incorporated as the biomarker of the response to NAC in BC.…”

“…We already established that pDCs were more prevalent in high-grade BC approached without any neoadjuvant treatment [37]. Interestingly, our previous findings showed that CD123 + pDCs density was particularly increased in higher grade ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) showing features of neoduct-genesis [36].…”

“…Our previous studies indicate that density and local composition of various subtypes of DCs (classified by different superficial antigens) is associated with certain morphological and molecular features in a primary and metastatic BC setting, which renders them as prognostic factors, both favorable and unfavorable. Furthermore, the local preponderance alone of distinct DCs subtypes was associated with certain tumor behavior and lower or higher burden of sentinel lymph nodes (SLNs) [36][37][38].…”