Prognostic value of Bcl-2 in two independent populations of estrogen receptor positive breast cancer patients treated with adjuvant endocrine therapy.

Autor: Larsen, Mathilde S., Bjerre, Karsten, Giobbie-Hurder, Anita, Lænkholm, Anne-Vibeke, Henriksen, Katrine L., Ejlertsen, Bent, Lykkesfeldt, Anne E., Rasmussen, Birgitte B.
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Zdroj: Acta Oncologica; Jul2012, Vol. 51 Issue 6, p781-789, 9p, 5 Charts, 2 Graphs
Abstrakt: Introduction. Estrogen receptor (ER) status is not an optimal marker for response to adjuvant endocrine therapy since approximately 30% of patients with ER-positive tumors eventually relapse. Bcl-2 is regulated by ER and may thus be considered as an indicator of ER activity and a candidate supplementary marker to ER status. Patients and methods. Tumor tissue from 257 patients with ER-positive breast cancer treated with tamoxifen was used for determination of the best threshold for immunohistochemical Bcl-2 assessment as prognostic marker. Subsequently, samples from the Danish patients of the randomized clinical trial BIG 1-98 comprising 1191 ER-positive patients treated with tamoxifen, letrozole or a sequence of the two were immunohistochemically stained for Bcl-2 to further explore the prognostic value of Bcl-2. Results. Two Bcl-2 levels were found to divide the population of the primary study into significantly different groups according to disease-free survival (DFS). Multivariate analysis confirmed the significance of the lowest level, and showed Bcl-2 to be an independent prognostic marker. Analysis of the Danish cohort of the BIG 1-98 confirmed that Bcl-2 was a significant predictor of DFS, independent of known prognostic markers. However, in an additional analysis of a subset of the Danish cohort of BIG 1-98 including only HER-2 normal patients, the effect of Bcl-2 was not statistically significant. Discussion. Low Bcl-2 can predict poor outcome of patients with ER-positive tumors treated with adjuvant endocrine therapy, whereas the use of Bcl-2 for determination of addition of chemotherapy was not supported by this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Databáze: Complementary Index