Vimentin as a tumour marker

Abstract

Correspondence 991Vimentin as a tumour marker Sir: In the paper by Leader et al. (1987) evaluating vimentin, in the January issue of Histopathology, we were interested to read of a breast carcinoma that gave positive staining with vimentin.In May 1985, a 52-year-old lady had a mastectomy for a typical poorly differentiated infiltrating duct carcinoma of the breast. In November 1986 she developed a tumour in a lung. The radiological and bronchoscopic appearances favoured a primary lung neoplasm. For our own interest a small battery of immunocytochemical stains was done on several bronchoscopic biopsies containing carcinoma; the tumour cells were very strongly vimentin-positive.Sections of the previous breast carcinoma were then subjected to the same immunocytochemical stains and gave identical results. The tumour too proved to be very strikingly vimentin-positive (Dako vimentin). Six other infiltrating duct carcinomas of the breast, stained at the same time, were vimentin-negative. This unusual staining of the breast carcinoma provided strong evidence that the lung lesion was a metastasis. The patient has been started on Tamoxifen.