Vimentin expression is not associated with poor prognosis in breast cancer

✍ Scribed by Ram Seshadri; Wendy A. Raymond; Anthony S.-Y. Leong; David J. Horsfall; Kieran McCaul

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1996
• Tongue: French
• Weight: 483 KB
• Volume: 67
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0020-7136
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1097-0215(19960729)67:3<353::aid-ijc8>3.0.co;2-q

✦ Synopsis

The clinical significance of vimentin intermediate filament (VIF) expression was studied in relation to other established prognostic parameters in primary breast cancer. Archival tumour samples embedded in paraffin were examined by immunohistochemistry with monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) to VIF, p53 protein and cell proliferation marker MIS-l . The vimentin staining pattern was heterogeneous, but in vimentin-positive areas > 80% of the tumour cells were positive. There was no association between vimentin expression and tumour size or the number of axillary lymph nodes involved. Vimentin expression was significantly associated with high-grade tumours, absence of hormone receptors, increased p53 expression and high tumour proliferation fraction as estimated by MIB-I count. Despite these associations with several recognised features of tumour aggressiveness, vimentin expression was not associated with increases in risk of relapse or death from breast cancer. o I996 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Over the past 10 years several pathological, molecular and clinical characteristics of primary breast cancer have been studied in an attempt to identify clinically useful prognostic parameters. These include studies of HER-2/neu oncogene amplification and expression, tumour proliferative indices,