PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Yawen Song
AU  - Hui Sun
AU  - Kailiang Wu
AU  - Jianke Lyu
AU  - Jingyue Zhang
AU  - Feng Gu
AU  - Yongjie Ma
AU  - Beibei Shen
AU  - Chijuan Wang
AU  - Xiaojiao Chen
AU  - Jing Xu
AU  - Weidong Li
AU  - Fangfang Liu
AU  - Li Fu
TI  - sLe<sup>x</sup> expression in invasive micropapillary breast carcinoma is associated with poor prognosis and can be combined with MUC1/EMA as a supplementary diagnostic indicator
AID  - 10.20892/j.issn.2095-3941.2020.0422
DP  - 2021 May 01
TA  - Cancer Biology and Medicine
PG  - 477--489
VI  - 18
IP  - 2
4099  - http://www.cancerbiomed.org/content/18/2/477.short
4100  - http://www.cancerbiomed.org/content/18/2/477.full
SO  - Cancer Biol Med2021 May 01; 18
AB  - Objective: Mucin 1 (MUC1/EMA) and sialyl Lewis X (sLex) indicate polarity reversal in invasive micropapillary carcinoma (IMPC). The purpose of this study was to evaluate the expression of MUC1/EMA and sLex and to assess their diagnostic and prognostic value in patients with IMPC.Methods: The expression of sLex and MUC1/EMA in 100 patients with IMPC and a control group of 89 patients with invasive ductal carcinoma not otherwise specified (IDC-NOS) were analyzed with IHC. Fresh tumor tissues were collected from patients with IMPC or IDC-NOS for primary culture and immunofluorescence analysis.Results: The rate of nodal metastasis was higher in patients with IMPC than those with IDC-NOS, and IMPC cells tended to express more sLex and MUC1/EMA in the cytomembranes (the stroma-facing surfaces of the micropapillary clusters) than IDC-NOS cells. In IMPC, high cytomembrane expression of sLex, but not MUC1/EMA, indicated poor prognosis. In addition, among the 100 patients with IMPC, 10 patients had sLex+/EMA– expression patterns, and 8 patients had sLex–/EMA+ expression patterns. The primary IMPC cells were suspended, non-adherent tumor cell clusters, whereas the primary IDC cells were adherent tumor cells. Immunofluorescence analysis showed that MUC1/EMA and sLex were co-expressed on the cytomembranes in IMPC cell clusters and in the cytoplasm in IDC-NOS cells.Conclusions: sLex can be used as a prognostic indicator and can be combined with MUC1/EMA as a complementary diagnostic indicator to avoid missed IMPC diagnosis.