Ranger Gurpreet Singh, Jewell Andrew, Thomas Valerie, Mokbel Kefah
Breast Cancer Unit, St. George's Hospital and Medical School, London, United Kingdom.
J Surg Oncol. 2004 Nov 1;88(2):100-3. doi: 10.1002/jso.20142.
Elevated expression of cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) has been established to be a feature of breast cancer. There has been inconsistency in the literature regarding the precise significance of this-some studies have found no clinicopathological relevance at all, whilst others have concluded COX-2 expression is an important biomarker in invasive disease and pre-cancerous lesions, correlating with poor prognostic features. We studied COX-2 expression in invasive ductal cancer (IDC) specimens and ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) in order to clarify these issues.
Archival specimens of IDC and DCIS (n = 39) were stained with a polyclonal antibody to COX-2. Results were correlated with recognised clinicopathological parameters.
COX-2 expression occurred in 36.7% of IDCs and 54.5% of DCIS lesions. There was no correlation between increased expression and any clinicopathological features. COX-2 expression did not occur in adjacent non-cancerous tissue (ANCT).
We have confirmed that COX-2 expression does occur in invasive cancers, in DCIS, and is not associated with established prognostic markers. The presence of COX-2 expression in DCIS and invasive cancers has positive implications for the future prevention and treatment of breast cancer with COX-2 inhibitors. A large proportion of tumours are, however, COX-2 negative and may be poor candidates for COX-2 suppression.
环氧化酶-2（COX-2）表达升高已被确认为乳腺癌的一个特征。关于其确切意义，文献中存在不一致之处——一些研究根本未发现其与临床病理特征相关，而另一些研究则得出结论，COX-2表达是浸润性疾病和癌前病变中的重要生物标志物，与不良预后特征相关。我们研究了浸润性导管癌（IDC）标本和原位导管癌（DCIS）中COX-2的表达，以阐明这些问题。
用抗COX-2多克隆抗体对IDC和DCIS的存档标本（n = 39）进行染色。将结果与公认的临床病理参数相关联。
36.7%的IDC和54.5%的DCIS病变中出现COX-2表达。表达增加与任何临床病理特征之间均无相关性。相邻非癌组织（ANCT）中未出现COX-2表达。
我们已证实COX-2表达确实存在于浸润性癌、DCIS中，且与既定的预后标志物无关。DCIS和浸润性癌中COX-2表达的存在对未来使用COX-2抑制剂预防和治疗乳腺癌具有积极意义。然而，很大一部分肿瘤是COX-2阴性的，可能不是COX-2抑制治疗的合适对象。
