Age determines the prognostic role of the cancer stem cell marker aldehyde dehydrogenase-1 in breast cancer

BMC Cancer

Research Article

Anton JM de Craen¹  Vincent THBM Smit²  Esther M de Kruijf³  Peter JK Kuppen³  Anita Sajet³  Cornelis JH van de Velde³  J Sven D Mieog³  Gerrit-Jan Liefers³  Esther Bastiaannet⁴ 

[1] Department of Gerontology & Geriatrics, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands;Department of Pathology, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands;Department of Surgery, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands;Department of Surgery, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands;Department of Gerontology & Geriatrics, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands;

关键词: Breast cancer;    Age;    ALDH1;    Prognostic factor Part of this work has been presented at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2011;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2407-12-42

 received in 2012-01-05, accepted in 2012-01-26,  发布年份 2012

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe purpose of this study was to compare the expression and the prognostic effect of the breast cancer stem cell marker aldehyde dehydrogenase-1 (ALDH1) in young and elderly breast cancer patients.MethodsThe study population (N = 574) consisted of all early breast cancer patients primarily treated with surgery in our center between 1985 and 1994. Median follow-up was 17.9 years (range: 0.1 to 23.5). Tissue microarray slides were immunohistochemically stained for ALDH1 expression and quantified by two independent observers who were blinded to clinical outcome. Assessment of the prognostic effect of ALDH1 expression was stratified according to age and systemic treatment.ResultsComplete lack of expression of ALDH1 was found in 40% of tumors. With increasing age more tumors showed complete absence of ALDH1 expression (P < .001). In patients aged > 65 years, ALDH1 status was not associated with any clinical outcome. Conversely, in patients aged < 65 years, ALDH1 positivity was an independent risk factor of worse outcome for relapse free period (hazard ratio = 1.71 (95% CI, 1.09 to 2.68); P = .021) and relative survival (relative excess risks of death = 2.36 (95% CI, 1.22 to 3.68); P = .016). Ten-year relative survival risk was 57% in ALDH1-positive patients compared to 83% in ALDH1-negative patients.ConclusionALDH1 expression and its prognostic effect are age-dependent. Our results support the hypothesis that breast cancer biology is different in elderly patients compared to their younger counterparts and emphasizes the importance of taking into consideration age-specific interactions in breast cancer research.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Mieog et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd 2012. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.