Study Of The Expression Of CK5/6 And AR In Triple Negative Breast Cancer

The ER,PR and Her-2 negative breast cancer is also called triple negative breast cancer,which account for about 15%of the total breast carcinoma.The triple negative breast cancer is highly aggressive in biology and resistant to most hormone therapy and target therapy,which make it difficult in treatment and poor prognosis.CK5/6 and androgen receptor(AR) have drawn comprehensive attention in breast cancer research field,CK5/6 is uniquely expressed in the breast basal cells and AR is considered as an independent prognosis factor.The expressions of CK5/6 and AR in the triple negative breast samples were determined by Immunohistochemical assays,and corresponding clinicopathological data was analyzed to characterize the clinical features of triple negative breast.This study described new characters of triple negative breast in Chinese population and provided the new insight of the biology of this kind of breast cancer.Objective To investigate the expression of CK5/6 and AR in triple negative and non triple negative breast cancer and their relationship with clinicopathological parameters.Methods Immunohistochemical assays were employed to determine the expression of CK5/6 and AR in 75 cases of triple negative breast cancer and 84 cases of non-triple negative breast cancer,with analysis of clinicopathological data of these patients.Results The expression of CK5/6 is more frequently detected in triple negative breast cancer with no relationship to age,menopausal status,lymphadenopathy,tumor size and stage,while AR is more likely to express in non-triple negative breast cancer and is correlated to tumor stage.Conclusion High expression level of CK5/6 and low expression level of AR are characteristics of triple negative breast cancer.In triple negative breast cancer,the independent expression of CK5/6 regardless of clinicopathological parameters suggests its basal-like phenotype,and expression loss in AR may caused by tumor progression.