To explore the expression of leukemia-related protein 16 (LRP16) in invasive ductal breast carcinoma and analyze its correlation with clinicopathological feature and prognosis, immunohistochemistry was performed on 100 cases of invasive ductal breast carcinoma. Medical records were reviewed and clinicopathological analysis was performed. Leukemia-related protein 16 expression was detected in 33 of 100 cases (33%) of the invasive ductal breast carcinoma. Expression of LRP16 in carcinoma was obviously higher than that in normal breast tissue. LRP16 protein expression was found in 27.6% (21/76) of carcinoma at stage I and II, and 50.0% (12/24) of carcinoma at stage III and IV. LRP16 expression was found correlative with metastasis in the axillary lymph node (P = 0.001), stage (P = 0.042), estrogen receptor (ER) expression (P = 0.001), fragile histidine triad (FHIT) expression (P = 0.015) and CD133 expression (P = 0.038), but not with grade (P = 0.543), tumor size (P = 0.263), age (P = 0.840), menopause (P = 0.701) and HER-2 gene amplification (P = 0.463). The difference of the mean disease free survival (DFS) time between cancer patients with LRP16 expression (43.7 months) and those without (77.7 months) was statistically significant (Log rank = 9.989, P = 0.002). The difference of the mean overall survival (OS) time between cancer patients with LRP16 expression (50.0 months) and those without (120.0 months) was statistically significant (Log rank = 9.977, P = 0.002). Our finding suggests that expression of LRP16 protein is correlated with the stage, metastasis, prognosis and expression of ER, progesterone receptor, Ki-67, CD133 and FHIT in invasive ductal breast carcinoma. (Cancer Sci 2010; 101: 2262-2268 B reast cancer has become the second most frequent cause of death in women, threatening females all over the world. In China, the incidence of breast cancer increases very rapidly and breast cancer has become the most common female malignant tumor. In spite of advances in diagnosis and treatment, almost one-fourth of women with this neoplasm will die. The major causes of treatment failure and ⁄ or death for breast cancer patients are tumor recurrence and metastasis. The use of adjuvant and palliative therapies in patients with breast carcinoma rely primarily on prognostic factors, such as tumor grade and size, axillary nodal status, distant metastasis and candidate biomarkers, such as hormone receptor (nuclear estrogen receptor [nER] and progesterone receptor [PR]) expression, and c-erbB2 ⁄ HER-2 ⁄ neu amplification ⁄ overexpression. Furthermore, expression of hormone receptors and overexpression of cerbB2 help in guiding therapeutic strategies and predict response to chemotherapy, endocrine therapy and specific immunotherapy with the antibody, trastuzumab. Therefore, such biomarkers in breast neoplasms provide information regarding the outcome of patients. A study in search of additional biomarkers is necessary for patients with breast cancer.Leukemia-related protein 16 (LRP16), which was originally recognized a...