Study Of The Relationship Between ERβ And The Prognosis Of Triple Negative Breast Cancer

Objective:Triple negative breast cancers (TNBC) are defined as tumours lacking the expression of estrogen receptor alpha(ERα), progesterone receptor(PR) and human epidermal growth factor 2(HER2) and are associated with aggressive clinical behaviour and a high rate of systemic relapse. Moreover, Lacking of endocrine therapy and targeted therapy against HER2, compared with other types, TNBC have poor overall survival rate (OS) and disease-free survival rate(DFS); To find new therapeutic targets is the research focus. Some reports showed that ERβpositivity was associated with significantly better clinical outcome in TNBC which tamoxifen therapy was administered. It suggests that ERP is a probably potential target in TNBC. However, ERβexpression frequency in TNBC and the relationship between its expression and prognosis of TNBC is not clear. This study was designed based on these background, its purpose is to further clarify the frequency of ERβexpression in TNBC and study the relationship between ERP and the clinical prognosis of TNBC.Methods:This study collected 96 cases of pathologically confirmed triple negative breast at the Zhongshan Hospital between 2004 and 2008. We detected ERP and its isoforms-ERβ1and ERβ2 in the triple-negative breast cancer by immunohistochemical, and analyzed if they have the correlation with clinical pathology factors; and analyzed if the expression of ERβ, ERβ1 and ERβ2 have the correlation with each other; and clarified the relationship of ERP and clinical prognosis of triple negative breast cancer.Results:ERβ, ERβ1 and ERβ2 positive expression rates were 71%,88%,30% respectively in 96 patients with triple negative breast cancer. The expression of ERβ, ERβ1 and ERβ2 showed no significant correlation with triple negative breast cancer. The expression of ERβ, ERβ1 and ERβ2 expression showed no significant correlation with the clinical prognosis of triple negative breast cancer.Conclusion:The frequency of ERβ, ERβ1 expression in triple negative breast can- cer is high and patients which express ER-βor ER-β1 are a potential endocrine thera-py group. The expression of ERβ, ERβ1 and ERβ2 expression showed no significant correlation with the clinical prognosis of triple negative breast without endocrine therapy.