Clinico-pathological relationship between androgen receptor and tumour infiltrating lymphocytes in triple negative breast cancer

Abstract

Background Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is an aggressive subtype of breast cancer (BC) with ill-defined therapeutic targets. Androgen receptor (AR) and tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) had a prognostic and predictive value in TNBC. The relationship between AR, TILs and clinical behaviour is still not fully understood. Methods Thirty-six TNBC patients were evaluated for AR (positive if ≥1% expression), CD3, CD4, CD8 and CD20 by immunohistochemistry. Stromal TILs were quantified following TILs Working Group recommendations. Lymphocyte-predominant breast cancer (LPBC) was defined as stromal TILs ≥ 50%, whereas lymphocyte-deficient breast cancer (LDBC) was defined as <50%. Results The mean age was 52.5 years and 27.8% were ≥60 years. Seven patients (21.2%) were AR+. All AR+ cases were postmenopausal (≥50 years old). LPBC was 32.2% of the whole cohort. Median TILs were 37.5% and 10% ( p = 0.1) and median CD20 was 20% and 7.5% ( p = 0.008) in AR− and AR+, respectively. Mean CD3 was 80.7% and 93.3% ( p = 0.007) and CD8 was 75% and 80.8% ( p = 0.41) in AR− and AR+, respectively. All patients who were ≥60 years old expressed CD20. LDBC was found to be significantly higher in N+ versus N− patients ( p = 0.03) with median TILs of 20% versus 50% in N+ versus N−, respectively ( p = 0.03). LDBC was associated with higher risk of lymph node (LN) involvement (odds ratio = 6; 95% CI = 1.05–34.21; p = 0.04). Conclusions AR expression was evident in older age (≥50 years). Median CD20 was higher in AR− TNBC, while mean CD3 was higher in AR+ tumours. LDBC was associated with higher risk of LN involvement. Larger studies are needed to focus on the clinical impact of the relation between AR and TILs in TNBC.

Bioinformatics Method Was Used to Analyze the Highly Expressed Gene FAM83A of Breast Cancer in Young Women

“…It is indeed expressed in breast cancer and several other tumor cell lines. Future work will collect normal breast tissue and breast cancer specimens, take fluorescence quantitative PCR and other methods to detect the relative expression of the gene in breast cancer and normal tissues, and design a well-thought-out experiment to explore the structure and function of the gene in depth [ 50 ].…”

Diverse role of androgen action in human breast cancer

“…This tendency is detected in ERα-positive cases but not in ERα-negative cases ( van Rooijen et al 2018 ). Conversely, in TNBC breast cancers, a significant positive correlation between AR and CD3-positive T cell infiltration was observed ( Elghazawy et al 2021 ). These findings suggest that androgens have opposite effects on intratumoral T cell infiltration in ERα-positive and ERα-negative breast cancers.…”

Newly Developed Targeted Therapies Against the Androgen Receptor in Triple-Negative Breast Cancer: A Review

“…As a result, the discovery of innovative TNBC therapeutics is critical. Recently, numerous investigations have revealed that additional types of hormone receptors, such as the androgen receptor, are expressed in TNBC (Gerratana et al, 2018;Traina et al, 2018;Elghazawy et al, 2021;Sridhar et al, 2022).…”