Journal
JAPANESE JOURNAL OF CLINICAL ONCOLOGY
Volume 42, Issue 12, Pages 1128-1137Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/jjco/hys159
Keywords
cytoplasmic Trop-1; Ep-CAM; breast cancer; node-positive; prognosis
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Funding
- Fondazione of the Cassa di Risparmio della Provincia di Chieti
- EU NoE Biopattern [508803]
- Italian Association for Cancer Research (AIRC, Italy)
- Marie Curie Transfer of Knowledge Fellowship-EC VI Framework Programme [014541]
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Trop-1/Ep-CAM modulates growth and survival of transformed cells, and it is highly expressed in most carcinomas including breast cancer. Only membranous staining is typically considered in evaluating Trop-1/epithelial cell adhesion molecule (Ep-CAM) expression in tumor cells. However, there is evidence of retention of Trop-1/Ep-CAM, as functionally incompetent molecules, in intra-cytoplasmic vesicles. Hence, we investigated whether cytoplasmic immunostaining may have an independent clinical significance with respect to membranous staining. Membranous and cytoplasmic Trop-1/Ep-CAM expression was immunohistochemically investigated in 642 unilateral breast cancers from patients with a 99-month median follow-up. Multiple correspondence analysis was used to investigate the association between Trop-1/Ep-CAM and other biological variables. The impact of Trop-1/Ep-CAM expression on the patients outcome was evaluated as event-free survival by the KaplanMeier method and proportional hazard Cox model. While tumors with intermediate/strong membranous staining were mostly associated with concomitant cytoplasmic Trop-1/Ep-CAM expression (97), tumors with weak-to-nil membranous staining showed intermediate/high cytoplasmic expression in 23 of cases. Cytoplasmic overexpression was associated with a favorable outcome, especially in node-positive patients, regardless of the adjuvant therapy received. Trop-1/Ep-CAM expression may have different clinical implications according to its subcellular localization.
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