The associations between mast cell infiltration, clinical features and molecular types of invasive breast cancer.

Jianfeng Sang,Dandan Yi,Xiaoqiao Tang,Tao Huang,Yifen Zhang

doi:10.18632/oncotarget.13163

Abstract

Associations between mast cell infiltration and the clinical features and known molecular profile of breast cancer remain unclear. The distribution difference of mast cell was evaluated, in 219 patients with no special type of invasive carcinoma, using sorts of age, max diameter of cancer, histological type, lymph node metastasis as well as the expressions of estrogen receptor (ER), progestogen receptor (PR), human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER-2) and nuclear protein Ki67. The mast cell density (MCD) in patients younger than 50 years old was significantly higher than that in patients with age ≥ 50. The MCD in ER or PR positive patients was significantly higher than MCD in ER or PR negative patients. The MCD in patients with Ki67 ≤ 14% was also significantly higher than MDC in patients with Ki67 > 14%. The MCD of patients with invasive ductal carcinoma was significantly higher than MCD of patients with invasive lobular carcinoma. No significant distribution difference of MCD was found to be associated with max diameter of cancer, lymph node metastasis and HER-2. Further analysis found that MDC was significantly higher in patients after neo-adjuvant chemotherapy. The distribution difference of mast cell widely exists in patients with distinct clinical features, the role of mast cell in breast cancer need further research with detailed and reasonable classification to clarify.

Highlights

In the humoral immune process, plasma cells synthesize and secrete IgE antibody when meet alien antigen; the IgE could bind to the high-affinity IgE receptor (FcεRI) located in the mast cell membrane and will active mast cell to participate humoral immunity [1]
219 subjects with invasive breast cancer were assembled in this report, their clinical characteristics of patients without neo-adjuvant chemotherapy were summarized in the Table 1
The median of max diameter of cancer is 2.2 cm (Table 1); 67.1%, 65.3% and 23.7% subjects were estrogen receptor (ER), progestogen receptor (PR) and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER-2) positive, respectively (Table 1). 30.0% breast cancer samples were Ki67 nuclear antigen (Ki67) positive (Table 1). 17.8%, 43.4%, 24.2% and 14.6% patients were categorized as luminal A, luminal B, HER-2 overexpression and triple negative respectively (Table 1)

Summary

Introduction

In the humoral immune process, plasma cells synthesize and secrete IgE antibody when meet alien antigen; the IgE could bind to the high-affinity IgE receptor (FcεRI) located in the mast cell membrane and will active mast cell to participate humoral immunity [1]. Studies show that mast cells accumulated in a variety of malignant tumors such as melanoma tumor [2], Hodgkin's lymphoma [3], pancreatic cancer [4], prostate cancer [5], esophageal cancer [6] and chronic lymphocytic leukemia [7, 8] and associated with poor prognosis and distant metastasis [2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. Mast cells secret various protease, especially tryptase, which can activate latent metalloproteinase, in turn caused extracellular matrix structure and composition changes, capillary formation and activation of vasoactive substances [12, 13]

Methods

Results

Conclusion