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  • Basal-Like Breast Cancer De...
    CHEANG, Maggie C. U; VODUC, David; BAJDIK, Chris; LEUNG, Samuel; MCKINNEY, Steven; CHIA, Stephen K; PEROU, Charles M; NIELSEN, Torsten O

    Clinical cancer research, 03/2008, Volume: 14, Issue: 5
    Journal Article

    Purpose: Basal-like breast cancer is associated with high grade, poor prognosis, and younger patient age. Clinically, a triple-negative phenotype definition estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor, and human epidermal growth factor receptor (HER)-2, all negative is commonly used to identify such cases. EGFR and cytokeratin 5/6 are readily available positive markers of basal-like breast cancer applicable to standard pathology specimens. This study directly compares the prognostic significance between three- and five-biomarker surrogate panels to define intrinsic breast cancer subtypes, using a large clinically annotated series of breast tumors. Experimental Design: Four thousand forty-six invasive breast cancers were assembled into tissue microarrays. All had staging, pathology, treatment, and outcome information; median follow-up was 12.5 years. Cox regression analyses and likelihood ratio tests compared the prognostic significance for breast cancer death-specific survival (BCSS) of the two immunohistochemical panels. Results: Among 3,744 interpretable cases, 17% were basal using the triple-negative definition (10-year BCSS, 6 7%) and 9% were basal using the five-marker method (10-year BCSS, 62%). Likelihood ratio tests of multivariable Cox models including standard clinical variables show that the five-marker panel is significantly more prognostic than the three-marker panel. The poor prognosis of triple-negative phenotype is conferred almost entirely by those tumors positive for basal markers. Among triple-negative patients treated with adjuvant anthracycline-based chemotherapy, the additional positive basal markers identified a cohort of patients with significantly worse outcome. Conclusions: The expanded surrogate immunopanel of estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor, human HER-2, EGFR, and cytokeratin 5/6 provides a more specific definition of basal-like breast cancer that better predicts breast cancer survival.