Breast Cancer Research Articles

Axillary lymph node metastasis in pure mucinous carcinoma of breast: clinicopathologic and ultrasonographic features

BackgroundThe purpose of this research is to study the sonographic and clinicopathologic characteristics that associate with axillary lymph node metastasis (ALNM) for pure mucinous carcinoma of breast (PMBC).MethodsA total of 176 patients diagnosed as PMBC after surgery were included. According to the status of axillary lymph nodes, all patients were classified into ALNM group (n = 15) and non-ALNM group (n = 161). The clinical factors (patient age, tumor size, location), molecular biomarkers (ER, PR, HER2 and Ki-67) and sonographic features (shape, orientation, margin, echo pattern, posterior acoustic pattern and vascularity) between two groups were analyzed to unclose the clinicopathologic and ultrasonographic characteristics in PMBC with ALNM.ResultsThe incidence of axillary lymph node metastasis was 8.5% in this study. Tumors located in the outer side of the breast (upper outer quadrant and lower outer quadrant) were more likely to have lymphatic metastasis, and the difference between the two group was significantly (86.7% vs. 60.3%, P = 0.043). ALNM not associated with age (P = 0.437). Although tumor size not associated with ALNM(P = 0.418), the tumor size in ALNM group (32.3 ± 32.7 mm) was bigger than non-ALNM group (25.2 ± 12.8 mm). All the tumors expressed progesterone receptor (PR) positively, and 90% of all expressed estrogen receptor (ER) positively, human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) were positive in two cases of non-ALNM group. Ki-67 high expression was observed in 36 tumors in our study (20.5%), and it was higher in ALNM group than non-ALNM group (33.3% vs. 19.3%), but the difference wasn’t significantly (P = 0.338).ConclusionsTumor location is a significant factor for ALNM in PMBC. Outer side location is more easily for ALNM. With the bigger size and/or Ki-67 higher expression status, the lymphatic metastasis seems more likely to present.

Clinical and genetic characteristics of carriers of the TP53 c.541C > T, p.Arg181Cys pathogenic variant causing hereditary cancer in patients of Arab-Muslim descent.

TP53 pathogenic variants cause Li-Fraumeni syndrome (LFS), with some variants causing an attenuated phenotype. Herein, we describe the clinical phenotype and genetic characteristics of carriers of NM_000546.6 (TP53): c.541C > T, (p.Arg181Cys) treated at Hadassah Medical Center. We retrospectively examined our genetic databases to identify all carriers of TP53 p.Arg181Cys. We reached out to carriers and their relatives and collected clinical and demographic data, lifestyle factors, carcinogenic exposures as well as additional blood samples for genetic testing and whole exome sequencing. Between 2005 and 2022 a total of 2875 cancer patients underwent genetic testing using genetic panels, whole exome sequencing or targeted TP53 assays. A total of 30 cancer patients, all of Arab-Muslim descent, were found to be carriers of TP53 p.Arg181Cys, the majority from Jerusalem and Hebron, two of which were homozygous for the variant. Carriers were from 24 distinct families of them, 15families (62.5%) met updated Chompret criteria for LFS. Median age of diagnosis was 35 years-old (range 1-69) with cancers characteristic of LFS (16 Breast cancer; 6 primary CNS tumors; 3 sarcomas) including 4 children with choroid plexus carcinoma, medulloblastoma, or glioblastoma. A total of 21 healthy carriers of TP53 p.Arg181Cys were identified at a median age of 39 years-old (range 2-54)-19 relatives and 2 additional pediatric non-cancer patients, in which the finding was incidental. We report a shared haplotype of 350kb among carriers, limited co-morbidities and low BMI in both cancer patients and healthy carriers. There were no demographic factors or carcinogenic exposures unique to carriers who developed malignancy. Upon exome analysis no other known pathogenic variants in cancer predisposing genes were identified. TP53 p.Arg181Cys is a founder pathogenic variant predominant to the Arab-Muslim population in Jerusalem and Hebron, causing attenuated-LFS. We suggest strict surveillance in established carriers and encourage referral to genetic testing for all cancer patients of Arab-Muslim descent in this region with LFS-associated malignancies as well as family members of established carriers.

Exploring the intricate relationship between miRNA dysregulation and breast cancer development: insights into the impact of environmental chemicals

Exploring the intricate relationship between miRNA dysregulation and breast cancer development: insights into the impact of environmental chemicals

Homologous-targeting biomimetic nanoparticles co-loaded with melittin and a photosensitizer for the combination therapy of triple negative breast cancer.

Melittin (Mel) is considered a promising candidate drug for the treatment of triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) due to its various antitumor effects. However, its clinical application is hampered by notable limitations, including hemolytic activity, rapid clearance, and a lack of tumor selectivity. Here, we designed novel biomimetic nanoparticles based on homologous tumor cell membranes and poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA)/poly(beta-aminoester) (PBAE), denoted MDM@TPP, which efficiently coloaded the cytolytic peptide Mel and the photosensitizer mTHPC. Both in vitro and in vivo, the MDM@TPP nanoparticles effectively mitigated the acute toxicity of melittin and exhibited strong TNBC targeting ability due to the homologous targeting effect of the tumor cell membrane. Under laser irradiation, the MDM@TPP nanoparticles showed excellent photodynamic performance and thus accelerated the release of Mel by disrupting cell membrane integrity. Moreover, Mel combined with photodynamic therapy (PDT) can synergistically kill tumor cells and induce significant immunogenic cell death, thereby stimulating the maturation of dendritic cells (DCs). In 4T1 tumor-bearing mice, MDM@TPP nanoparticles effectively inhibited the growth and metastasis of primary tumors and finally prevented tumor recurrence by improving the immune response.

Identification of Gene Expression in Different Stages of Breast Cancer with Machine Learning

Identification of Gene Expression in Different Stages of Breast Cancer with Machine Learning

Validation of the genomic profile for personalized breast cancer treatment: POLAR study

Validation of the genomic profile for personalized breast cancer treatment: POLAR study

Cellular Responses Induced by NCT-503 Treatment on Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Cell Lines: A Proteomics Approach

Cellular Responses Induced by NCT-503 Treatment on Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Cell Lines: A Proteomics Approach

Trajectories and influencing factors of social anxiety in postoperative breast cancer patients

BackgroundSocial anxiety among postoperative breast cancer patients is a prevalent concern, with its intensity fluctuating throughout the course of treatment. The study aims to describe the trajectory of social anxiety in postoperative breast cancer patients, explore the influencing factors, and provide theoretical support for the construction of future intervention programs.MethodsThis study was conducted from June 2022 to January 2023, encompassing 213 breast cancer patients from three first-class hospitals in China. Data collection occurred at four distinct time points. A growth mixture model was employed to identify latent categories representing the trajectories of social anxiety changes among patients. A multiple regression analysis was utilized to explore predictive factors associated with different latent trajectory categories.ResultsThe trajectory of social anxiety changes in postoperative breast cancer patients includes five potential categories: maintaining mild social anxiety group, changing from mild to moderate social anxiety group, maintaining moderate social anxiety group, changing from moderate to severe social anxiety group, and maintaining severe social anxiety group. Cluster analysis results indicated three types: positive, negative, and low. Logistic regression analysis revealed that younger age, spouses concerned about postoperative appearance, chemotherapy with taxol-based drugs, opting for modified radical surgery or radical mastectomy surgical approaches, and breast cancer patients with negative rumination were factors that influenced patients’ social anxiety (P < 0.05).ConclusionThe trajectory of social anxiety in postoperative breast cancer patients comprises five potential categories. In clinical practice, it is essential to strengthen the management of high-risk populations susceptible to experiencing social anxiety emotions, including younger age, spouses concerned about postoperative appearance, chemotherapy with taxol-based drugs, opting for modified radical surgery or radical mastectomy surgical approaches, and breast cancer patients with negative rumination.

Assessment of the Effect of Surface Modification of Metal Oxides on Silver Nanoparticles: Optical Properties and Potential Toxicity.

Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) have garnered significant interest due to their distinctive properties and potential applications. Traditional fabrication methods for nanoparticles often involve high-energy physical conditions and the use of toxic solvents. Various green synthesis approaches have been developed to circumvent these issues and produce environmentally benign nanoparticles. Our study focuses on the green synthesis of AgNPs using L-ascorbic acid and explores the modification of their properties to enhance antibacterial and anticancer effects. This is achieved by coating the nanoparticles with Zinc oxide (ZnO) and Silica oxide (SiO2), which alters their optical properties in the visible spectrum. The synthesized formulations-AgNPs, zinc oxide-silver nanoparticles (Ag@ZnO), and silica oxide-silver nanoparticles (Ag@SiO2) core/shell nanoparticles-were characterized using a suite of physicochemical techniques, including Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS), Zeta potential measurement, UV-Vis spectroscopy, Refractive Index Measurements, and Optical Anisotropy Assessment. TEM imaging revealed particle sizes of 11 nm for AgNPs, 8 nm for Ag@ZnO, and 400 nm for Ag@SiO2. The Zeta potential values for Ag@ZnO and Ag@SiO2 were measured at -17.0 ± 5 mV and -65.0 ± 8 mV, respectively. UV-Vis absorption spectra were recorded for all formulations in the 320 nm to 600 nm wavelength range. The refractive index of AgNPs at 404.7 nm was 1.34572, with slight shifts observed for Ag@ZnO and Ag@SiO2 to 1.34326 and 1.37378, respectively. The cytotoxicity of the nanocomposites against breast cancer cell lines (MCF-7) was assessed using the MTT assay. The results indicated that AgNPs and Ag@ZnO exhibited potent therapeutic effects, with IC50 values of 494.00 µg/mL and 430.00 µg/mL, respectively, compared to 4247.20 µg/mL for Ag@SiO2. Additionally, the antibacterial efficacy of AgNPs was significantly enhanced under visible light irradiation. Ag@ZnO demonstrated substantial antibacterial activity both with and without light exposure, while the Ag@SiO2 nanocomposites significantly reduced the inherent antibacterial activity of silver. Conversely, the Ag@ZnO nanocomposites displayed pronounced antibacterial and anticancer activities. The findings suggest that silver-based nanocomposites, particularly Ag@ZnO, could be practical tools in water treatment and the pharmaceutical industry due to their enhanced therapeutic properties.

Therapeutic Potential of Withaferin-A and Propolis Combinational Drug Therapy for Breast Cancer: An In Vivo Interpretation for Validating the Antiproliferative Efficacy and Ameliorative Potential in Benzo[a]pyrene-Induced Breast Metastasis

Therapeutic Potential of Withaferin-A and Propolis Combinational Drug Therapy for Breast Cancer: An In Vivo Interpretation for Validating the Antiproliferative Efficacy and Ameliorative Potential in Benzo[a]pyrene-Induced Breast Metastasis

Analysis of Risk Factors for Psychological Stress in Breast Cancer Patients: Observational Study in West Java, Indonesia

Analysis of Risk Factors for Psychological Stress in Breast Cancer Patients: Observational Study in West Java, Indonesia

Outcomes in Nonmetastatic Hormone Receptor-Positive HER2-Negative Pure Mucinous Breast Cancer: A Multicenter Cohort Study.

Although considered a favorable subtype, pure mucinous breast cancer (PMBC) can recur, and evidence for adjuvant therapy is limited. We aimed to compare outcomes of nonmetastatic PMBC with invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC) and invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC) to address these uncertainties. Individual patient-level data from 6 centers on stage I-III hormone receptor-positive and HER2-negative PMBC, IDC, and ILC were used to analyze recurrence-free interval (RFI), recurrence-free survival (RFS), and overall survival (OS), and to identify prognostic factors for PMBC. Data from 20,684 IDC cases, 1,475 ILC cases, and 943 PMBC cases were used. Median follow-up was 6.6 years. Five-year RFI, RFS, and OS for PMBC were 96.1%, 94.9%, and 98.1%, respectively. On multivariable Cox regression, PMBC demonstrated superior RFI (hazard ratio [HR], 0.59; 95% CI, 0.43-0.80), RFS (HR, 0.70; 95% CI, 0.56-0.89), and OS (HR, 0.71; 95% CI, 0.53-0.96) compared with IDC. ILC showed comparable outcomes to IDC. Fewer than half (48.7%) of recurrences in PMBC were distant, which was a lower rate than for IDC (67.3%) and ILC (80.6%). In contrast to RFI, RFS events were driven more by non-breast cancer deaths in older patients. Significant prognostic factors for RFI among PMBC included positive lymph node(s) (HR, 2.42; 95% CI, 1.08-5.40), radiotherapy (HR, 0.44; 95% CI, 0.23-0.85), and endocrine therapy (HR, 0.25; 95% CI, 0.09-0.70). No differential chemotherapy associations with outcomes were detected across PMBC subgroups by nodal stage, tumor size, and age. A separate SEER database analysis also did not find any association of improved survival with adjuvant chemotherapy in these subgroups. Compared with IDC, PMBC demonstrated superior RFI, RFS, and OS. Lymph node negativity, adjuvant radiotherapy, and endocrine therapy were associated with superior RFI. Adjuvant chemotherapy was not associated with better outcomes.

The Effects of National Insurance Coverage Expansion and Genetic Counseling’s Role on BRCA1/2 Mutation Tests in Breast Cancer Patients

The Effects of National Insurance Coverage Expansion and Genetic Counseling’s Role on BRCA1/2 Mutation Tests in Breast Cancer Patients

NeighborNet: Learning Intra- and Inter-Image Pixel Neighbor Representation for Breast Lesion Segmentation.

Breast lesion segmentation from ultrasound images is essential in computer-aided breast cancer diagnosis. To alleviate the problems of blurry lesion boundaries and irregular morphologies, common practices combine CNN and attention to integrate global and local information. However, previous methods use two independent modules to extract global and local features separately, such feature-wise inflexible integration ignores the semantic gap between them, resulting in representation redundancy/insufficiency and undesirable restrictions in clinic practices. Moreover, medical images are highly similar to each other due to the imaging methods and human tissues, but the captured global information by transformer-based methods in the medical domain is limited within images, the semantic relations and common knowledge across images are largely ignored. To alleviate the above problems, in the neighbor view, this paper develops a pixel neighbor representation learning method (NeighborNet) to flexibly integrate global and local context within and across images for lesion morphology and boundary modeling. Concretely, we design two neighbor layers to investigate two properties (i.e., number and distribution) of neighbors. The neighbor number for each pixel is not fixed but determined by itself. The neighbor distribution is extended from one image to all images in the datasets. With the two properties, for each pixel at each feature level, the proposed NeighborNet can evolve into the transformer or degenerate into the CNN for adaptive context representation learning to cope with the irregular lesion morphologies and blurry boundaries. The state-of-the-art performances on three ultrasound datasets prove the effectiveness of the proposed NeighborNet. The code is available at: https://github.com/fjcaoww/NeighborNet.

The usage and costs of national drug price-negotiated anticancer medicines in a first-tier city in Northeast China: a study based on health insurance data

BackgroundThe National Drug Price Negotiation (NDPN) policy has entered a normalisation stage, aiming to alleviate, to some extent, the disease-related and economic burdens experienced by cancer patients. This study analysed the use and subsequent burden of anticancer medicines among cancer patients in a first-tier city in northeast China.MethodsWe assessed the usage of 64 negotiated anticancer medicines using the data on the actual drug deployment situation, the frequency of medical insurance claims and actual medication costs. The affordability of these medicines was measured using the catastrophic health expenditure (CHE) incidence and intensity of occurrence. Finally, we used the defined daily doses (DDDs) and defined daily doses cost (DDDc) as indicators to evaluate the actual use of these medicines in the region.ResultsDuring the study period, 63 of the 64 medicines were readily available. From the perspective of drug usage, the frequency of medical insurance claims for negotiated anticancer medicines and medication costs showed an increasing trend from 2018 to 2021. Cancer patients typically sought medical treatment at tertiary hospitals and purchased medicines at community pharmacies. The overall quantity and cost of medications for patients covered by the Urban Employee Basic Medical Insurance (UEBMI) were five times higher than those covered by the Urban and Rural Resident Medical Insurance (URRMI). The frequency of medical insurance claims and medication costs were highest for lung and breast cancer patients. Furthermore, from 2018 to 2021, CHE incidence showed a decreasing trend (2.85–1.60%) under urban patients’ payment capability level, but an increasing trend (11.94%–18.42) under rural patients’ payment capability level. The average occurrence intensities for urban (0.55–1.26 times) and rural (1.27–1.74 times) patients showed an increasing trend. From the perspective of drug utilisation, the overall DDD of negotiated anticancer medicines showed an increasing trend, while the DDDc exhibited a decreasing trend.ConclusionThis study demonstrates that access to drugs for urban cancer patients has improved. However, patients’ medical behaviours are affected by some factors such as hospital level and type of medical insurance. In the future, the Chinese Department of Health Insurance Management should further improve its work in promoting the fairness of medical resource distribution and strengthen its supervision of the nation’s health insurance funds.

Retraction: Exosomes derived from microRNA-148b-3p-overexpressing human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells restrain breast cancer progression

Retraction: Exosomes derived from microRNA-148b-3p-overexpressing human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells restrain breast cancer progression

Optimizing Breast Cancer Detection: Deep Transfer Learning Empowered by SVM Classifiers

Optimizing Breast Cancer Detection: Deep Transfer Learning Empowered by SVM Classifiers

COMMENTS Vadim V. Polovinkin, Artem V. Volkov, Maria S. Yakovenko, Anna I. Demina The difficulties of differential diagnosis of Crohn’s disease and metastatic breast cancer (case report)

COMMENTS Vadim V. Polovinkin, Artem V. Volkov, Maria S. Yakovenko, Anna I. Demina The difficulties of differential diagnosis of Crohn’s disease and metastatic breast cancer (case report)

Mitigation of Breast Cancer Cells’ Invasiveness via Down Regulation of ETV7, Hippo, and PI3K/mTOR Pathways by Vitamin D3 Gold-Nanoparticles

Mitigation of Breast Cancer Cells’ Invasiveness via Down Regulation of ETV7, Hippo, and PI3K/mTOR Pathways by Vitamin D3 Gold-Nanoparticles

The emerging predictive and prognostic role of HER2 in HER2-negative early breast cancer: a retrospective study.

Many patients with early breast cancer (eBC) undergoing neoadjuvant chemotherapy do not achieve pathological complete response (pCR), which is a prognostic factor. We examined the role of HER2-low expression in predicting pCR and prognosis in HER2-negative eBC. We evaluated patients with stage I-III HER2-negative BC, treated between 2013 and 2023 at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, London. Tumors were classified based on estrogen receptor (ER) status and into HER2-low and HER2-zero subgroups. We analyzed pCR rates, relapse-free survival (RFS) and overall survival (OS). 754 patients were included in the analysis. pCR rate was 8.9% in the ER+ /HER2-low, 16.5% in the ER+ /HER2-zero, 38.9% in the ER- ER-/HER2-low and 35.9% in the ER-/HER2-zero eBC (p < 0.001). Multivariable analysis showed a significantly lower pCR rate in HER2-low compared to HER2-zero BC in the ER+ subgroup. At a median follow-up of 63.8months (59.9-67.4), we observed longer OS in HER2-low compared to HER2-zero patients in the overall and in the ER+ population. There was no predictive or prognostic impact of HER2-low status in the ER- population. This study supports the interpretation of HER2 status as a possible prognostic and predictive biomarker for HER2-negative eBC, especially among patients with ER+ disease.