No abstract

According to the St. Gallen 2011 consensus, proper qualification of breast cancer patients for treatment requires taking into consideration the division into biological types of neoplasms. The goal of this work was to assess the prevalence of all biological types of breast cancer in the population of Kuyavian-Pomeranian province. We determined the influence of particular types of neoplasms on the degree of disease progression and the choice of therapeutic management. The study was conducted on a group of 2653 patients treated surgically due to malignant breast tumors in the Oncology Centre in Bydgoszcz. In the analyzed clinical material we determined the biological type of cancer as well as other prognostic factors. The most commonly identified types of cancer were luminal B1 type (38.4%) and luminal A type (27.4% of cases), followed by a triple-negative type, luminal B2 type and HER2-positive type (respectively: 11.4%, 10.2%, and 6.9% of patients). Estrogen receptors were present in 81.1% and progesterone receptors in 71.4% of subjects. HER2 overexpression was identified in 17.3% of patients. Routine use of a biology-based division into cancer types influences the choice of anti-cancer treatment. Diagnosis of luminal A type of tumor more commonly than other biological types of cancer coexists with lower clinical and pathological disease staging. It allows for more frequent use of sparing surgical techniques in patients. It also makes systemic neoadjuvant chemotherapy unnecessary in the majority of patients (differences in such cases exhibit statistical significance of p < 0.0001).

Purpose The mutation of p53 is considered a pivotal step in bladder cancer pathogenesis. Recently, distinct interactions between p53 and CDK9, a transcription regulator, have been described. In this work, we explored the prognostic role of p53 expression and evaluated its associations with CDK9 in urothelial carcinoma. Materials and methods The research group consisted of 67 bladder cancer samples and 32 normal urothelial mucosa samples. All specimens were analyzed using ImageJ and the IHC profiler plugin. To validate the results, 406 cases from The Cancer Genome Atlas database were analyzed. Results P53 and CDK9 are overexpressed in urothelial cancer tissues when compared to normal urothelial tissues (p < 0.05). High p53 expression was observed in metastatic tumors and tumors with high CDK9 expression (p < 0,05). High p53 expression was predictive for shorter survival in patients with non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer (HR = 0.107 [0.012–0.96]; p = 0.046) but did not correlate with prognosis in the muscle-invasive group. In high CDK9 cancers, high p53 expression correlated with the occurrence of high-grade and muscle-invasive tumors (p < 0.05). Conclusion High expression of p53 correlates with unfavorable clinical features of bladder cancer. CDK9 is associated with the expression of p53, possibly through interactions with p53 inhibitors. Since the blockade of CDK9 in other malignancies reactivates wild-p53 activity, confirming the crosstalk between p53 and CDK9 in bladder cancer may be another step to explain the mechanism of tumor progression in its early stages.

Tumor hypoxia is an adverse prognostic factor which promotes cancer aggressiveness and limits its radio-and chemosensitivity. The aim of our study was to explore the relationship between endogenous hypoxia markers and classic prognostic factors, including clinical stage and the expression of ER, PR, and HER2 in primary untreated breast carcinoma. Methods: A retrospective immunohistochemical analysis of archived tissue blocks collected from 153 women, who underwent total mastectomy and lymph node dissection, included the expression of two hypoxia-related proteins: HIF-1α and GLUT1. Results: GLUT1 labelling index (LI) showed a positive correlation with T stage (R = 0.18, p = 0.026) and HER2 status (R = 0.25, p = 0.002), and a negative correlation with the expression of ER (R = −0.19, p = 0.017) and PR (R = −0.17, p = 0.032). HIF-1α LI showed a positive correlation with ER expression (R = 0.16, p = 0.045). In the multivariate regression analysis, a different relationship between classic prognostic factors and the two tested hypoxia proteins was proven. Higher GLUT1 expression correlated with ER and PR negativity (p = 0.02 and p = 0.01, respectively) as well as with higher expression of HER2 (p = 0.04). HIF-1α showed no association with PR and HER2, but a positive correlation with ER (p = 0.02). Neither of the hypoxia proteins was associated with a tumor grade. Only one clinical feature, T stage, correlated with both of the hypoxia markers: positively with GLUT1 (p = 0.049) and negatively with HIF-1α (p = 0.01) expression. Conclusions: In breast cancer, GLUT1 expression may be considered an additional prognostic factor which correlates with an adverse status of HER2 and hormonal receptors, and indicates a more hypoxic, radio-and chemotherapy refractory profile of carcinoma.