Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, FL 33136, USA.
Oncol Rep. 2013 Jan;29(1):141-8. doi: 10.3892/or.2012.2088. Epub 2012 Oct 17.
Breast cancer is the second leading cause of death by cancer in women in the United States. The occurrence of high numbers of macrophages in the tumor stroma has been associated with tumor progression and poor prognosis in breast and other solid malignancies. However, macrophage numbers in tumors have not been validated as a prognostic factor in clinical practice. The present analysis was designed as a pilot study aimed at determining whether the presence of CD68+ macrophages is an independent prognostic factor in small T1 estrogen receptor (ER)+ breast cancers across three different ethnic groups, i.e. African-American, Latina and Caucasian women. A retrospective pilot analysis of 30 T1 breast cancer cases encompassing these three ethnic groups was carried out. African-American and Latina women present with less incidence but more aggressive breast cancer disease and, therefore, proportionally higher death rates. Using immuno-histochemistry, we sought to identify whether there was any association between the presence and density of CD68+ macrophages and standard prognostic markers with overall survival in these groups. Our data revealed that overall survival did not differ significantly for the occurrence or density of CD68+ macrophages in T1 ER+ tumors. There were also no significant differences in overall survival for the occurrence of CD68+ macrophages across ethnicities, although macrophage numbers were significantly higher in tumors from African-American and Latina than in Caucasian patients. Importantly, but not surprisingly, the absence of the progesterone receptor was associated very strongly with decreased overall survival. This pilot project shows that CD68+ macrophages are not pivotal in determining tumor prognosis in early T1 breast cancers. New studies are presently being conducted to assess the value of different macrophage markers and macrophage activation profiles as prognostic factors in breast cancers of different clinical stages, using a larger number of patients among these three different ethnicities.
乳腺癌是美国女性癌症死亡的第二大主要原因。肿瘤基质中大量巨噬细胞的存在与乳腺癌和其他实体恶性肿瘤的肿瘤进展和不良预后相关。然而，肿瘤中的巨噬细胞数量尚未在临床实践中被验证为预后因素。本分析旨在设计一项初步研究，以确定 CD68+巨噬细胞是否是三种不同种族（即非裔美国女性、拉丁裔和白种人女性）的小 T1 雌激素受体（ER）+乳腺癌中的独立预后因素。对涵盖这三种族的 30 例 T1 乳腺癌病例进行了回顾性初步分析。非裔美国女性和拉丁裔女性的乳腺癌发病率较低，但疾病更具侵袭性，因此死亡率相对较高。我们使用免疫组织化学方法，试图确定 CD68+巨噬细胞的存在和密度与这些群体的总体生存率之间是否存在任何关联。我们的数据表明，T1 ER+肿瘤中 CD68+巨噬细胞的存在和密度与总体生存率之间没有显著差异。在不同种族中，CD68+巨噬细胞的总体生存率也没有显著差异，尽管来自非裔美国人和拉丁裔的肿瘤中的巨噬细胞数量明显高于白种人患者。重要的是，但并不奇怪，孕激素受体的缺失与总体生存率的降低密切相关。该初步项目表明，CD68+巨噬细胞在早期 T1 乳腺癌中并不是决定肿瘤预后的关键因素。目前正在进行新的研究，以评估不同的巨噬细胞标志物和巨噬细胞激活谱作为不同临床阶段乳腺癌的预后因素的价值，在这三种不同种族中使用更多的患者。
