Purpose: Epithelial mesenchymal transition is a major mechanism to explain metastatic events in breast cancer. Another important aspect is that cells with stem cell properties are able to become resistant against chemotherapeutics. Our main goal was to investigate the role of the EMT marker, N-cadherin, and of the stem cell marker, CD133, in breast cancer.
Methods: The expressions of N-cadherin and CD133 were assessed by immunohistochemistry in 307 primary tumors from breast cancer patients and for 30 patients, in the related recurrences and/or metastases. We studied the correlation between both markers, their associations with known clinicopathological parameters and their role as predictive markers for survival time. Different expressions of both markers in primary tumor and recurrences or metastases were examined.
Results: N-cadherin and CD133 expressions correlated positively in the 261 primary tumor samples (p = 0.000) and in the 45 primary tumor, recurrence or metastasis samples (p = 0.010). In patients without lymph node metastases, the 10-year survival time was significantly lower when the tumor was N-cadherin-positive (p = 0.042). Expression of N-cadherin was also significantly higher in metastases than in the related primary tumors (p = 0.039).
Conclusion: N-cadherin and CD133 expressions are strongly correlated and N-cadherin appears as a potential metastases marker in a specific patient subpopulation.