TY - JOUR TI - The clinicopathologic and prognostic significance of CD44+/CD24-/low and CD44-/CD24+ tumor cells in invasive breast carcinomas AU - Mylona, E. AU - Giannopoulou, I. AU - Fasomytakis, E. AU - Nomikos, A. AU - Magkou, C. AU - Bakarakos, P. AU - Nakopoulou, L. JO - HUMAN PATHOLOGY PY - 2008 VL - 39 TODO - 7 SP - 1096-1102 PB - SN - 0046-8177 TODO - 10.1016/j.humpath.2007.12.003 TODO - CD24 antigen; Hermes antigen; tumor antigen, adult; aged; article; breast carcinoma; cancer staging; disease association; disease free survival; female; histopathology; human; human tissue; image analysis; immunohistochemistry; invasive carcinoma; lymph node metastasis; major clinical study; pathology; phenotype; prevalence; prognosis; tumor cell; tumor differentiation, Antigens, CD24; Antigens, CD44; Breast Neoplasms; Carcinoma, Ductal, Breast; Carcinoma, Lobular; Disease-Free Survival; Female; Fluorescent Antibody Technique, Indirect; Humans; Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; Immunoenzyme Techniques; Lymph Nodes; Lymphatic Metastasis; Mastectomy; Neoplasm Invasiveness; Survival Rate TODO - Cells with distinct phenotypes and stem cell-like properties have been reported to exist in breast cancer. The aim of the present study was to investigate the clinicopathologic and prognostic significance of the CD44+/CD24-/low and CD44-/CD24+ tumor phenotypes' prevalence. Double immunohistochemistry was applied on a series of 155 paraffin-embedded breast tissue specimens to detect CD44 and CD24. Evaluation of the phenotypes was performed by image analysis. The prevalence of CD44+/CD24-/low and CD44-/CD24+ tumor cells was 58.7% and 82.6%, respectively. The dominance of the CD44+/CD24-/low tumor cells was inversely associated with lymph node metastasis (P = .019) and tended to inversely associate with the stage of the disease (P = .068). Moreover, the prevalence of CD44+/CD24-/low was found to exert no significant impact on patients' prognosis although it displayed a tendency toward an increase in disease-free survival (P = .074). On the other hand, the prevalence of CD44-/CD24+ tumor cells was found to have no clinicopathologic significance. However, it was found to exert an unfavorable impact on both relapse-free (P = .009) and overall survival (P = .046) of the patients with breast carcinomas of intermediate differentiation (grade 2). In breast tissue, CD44+/CD24-/low tumor cells seem to be associated with lack of lymph node metastasis and a tendency toward an increase of the relapse-free survival of the patients. On the contrary, tumor cells with the phenotype CD44-/CD24+ seem to identify patients with worse disease-free and overall survival within the group of intermediate-grade differentiation patients whose prognosis is difficult to assess. © 2008. ER -