sLex expression in invasive micropapillary breast carcinoma is associated with poor prognosis and can be combined with MUC1/EMA as a supplementary diagnostic indicator

Yawen Song; Hui Sun; Kailiang Wu; Jianke Lyu; Jingyue Zhang; Feng Gu; Yongjie Ma; Beibei Shen; Chijuan Wang; Xiaojiao Chen; Jing Xu; Weidong Li; Fangfang Liu; Li Fu

doi:10.20892/j.issn.2095-3941.2020.0422

sLe^x expression in invasive micropapillary breast carcinoma is associated with poor prognosis and can be combined with MUC1/EMA as a supplementary diagnostic indicator

Cancer Biol Med. 2021 Apr 24;18(2):477-489. doi: 10.20892/j.issn.2095-3941.2020.0422. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Yawen Song^#¹, Hui Sun^#¹, Kailiang Wu¹, Jianke Lyu¹, Jingyue Zhang¹, Feng Gu¹, Yongjie Ma¹, Beibei Shen¹, Chijuan Wang¹, Xiaojiao Chen¹, Jing Xu¹, Weidong Li¹, Fangfang Liu¹, Li Fu¹

Affiliation

¹ Department of Breast Cancer Pathology and Research Laboratory, Tianjin Medical University Cancer Institute and Hospital, National Clinical Research Center for Cancer, Key Laboratory of Cancer Prevention and Therapy, Tianjin, Tianjin's Clinical Research Center for Cancer; Key Laboratory of Breast Cancer Prevention and Therapy, Tianjin Medical University, Ministry of Education; Breast Cancer Innovation Team of the Ministry of Education; State Key Laboratory of Breast Cancer Research, Tianjin 300060, China.

^# Contributed equally.

PMID: 33893728
PMCID: PMC8185870
DOI: 10.20892/j.issn.2095-3941.2020.0422

Abstract

Objective: Mucin 1 (MUC1/EMA) and sialyl Lewis X (sLe^x) indicate polarity reversal in invasive micropapillary carcinoma (IMPC). The purpose of this study was to evaluate the expression of MUC1/EMA and sLe^x and to assess their diagnostic and prognostic value in patients with IMPC.

Methods: The expression of sLe^x and MUC1/EMA in 100 patients with IMPC and a control group of 89 patients with invasive ductal carcinoma not otherwise specified (IDC-NOS) were analyzed with IHC. Fresh tumor tissues were collected from patients with IMPC or IDC-NOS for primary culture and immunofluorescence analysis.

Results: The rate of nodal metastasis was higher in patients with IMPC than those with IDC-NOS, and IMPC cells tended to express more sLe^x and MUC1/EMA in the cytomembranes (the stroma-facing surfaces of the micropapillary clusters) than IDC-NOS cells. In IMPC, high cytomembrane expression of sLe^x, but not MUC1/EMA, indicated poor prognosis. In addition, among the 100 patients with IMPC, 10 patients had sLe^x+/EMA- expression patterns, and 8 patients had sLe^x-/EMA+ expression patterns. The primary IMPC cells were suspended, non-adherent tumor cell clusters, whereas the primary IDC cells were adherent tumor cells. Immunofluorescence analysis showed that MUC1/EMA and sLex were co-expressed on the cytomembranes in IMPC cell clusters and in the cytoplasm in IDC-NOS cells.

Conclusions: sLe^x can be used as a prognostic indicator and can be combined with MUC1/EMA as a complementary diagnostic indicator to avoid missed IMPC diagnosis.

Keywords: EMA; Invasive micropapillary carcinoma; diagnostic indicator; polarity reversal; sLex.

Abstract

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