Background: Tissue microarray (TMA) allows the rapid immunohistochemical analysis of thousands of tissue samples in a parallel fashion. This study was designed to analyze the cortactin status in breast cancer using TMA and to investigate the relationship of cortactin status to breast cancer biology.
Patients and methods: Archival tissue specimens from 99 patients with primary invasive breast cancer were selected. The cortactin expression was analyzed by TMA. Age, estrogen receptor status, histological grading and TNM staging data were also collected.
Results: There were 23 patients (23.2%) with low (+) expression of cortactin, 60 patients (60.6%) with intermediate (++) expression and 16(16.2%) with strong (+++) expression. There was no significant relationship between cortactin expression and age, histological grading, primary tumor staging, lymph node status, estrogen receptor and TNM stage. By multivariate analysis, estrogen receptor status and TNM staging were found to be significantly related to the overall five-year survival rate.
Conclusion: Cortactin expression failed to demonstrate a prognostic value for patients with breast cancer.