Affiliations: Laboratory of Genetics, Immunology and Human
Pathology, Faculty of Sciences of Tunis, Tunis, Tunisia | Salah Azeiz Oncology Institute, Tunis, Tunisia
Note: [] Corresponding author: Imen Ferchichi, Department of Biology
Laboratory of Genetics, Immunology and Human Pathology, Faculty of Sciences of
Tunis, Tunis 1060, Tunisia. Tel.: +216 28 100 848; Fax: +216 71 231 401;
E-mail: science.biologique@yahoo.fr
Abstract: In an attempt to better unfold the antitumor immune response and
invasion strategies perused by tumor cells, markers such as CD99 and HLA-II
have been stained in breast tumors, some of them turned out to be important for
prognosis and its outcome. CD99 is involved in the intracellular transport of
HLA-II proteins. The expression of HLA-II and CD99 molecules has been
demonstrated in a broader range of neoplastic tissues, including some
epithelial tumors. In the present work, we stained CD99 and HLA-II in breast
malignant and non-malignant tissues sections obtained from biopsies resected
surgically from 80 Tunisian women. Data implied that CD99 marks malignant
tissue significantly as compared to non-malignant breast tissue. HLA-II
staining allowed determining the correlation between breast cancer and HLA-II
with cytoplasmic localization. CD99 and HLA-II immunostaining was also examined
in correlation with two of the most important breast cancer prognostication in
routine clinical practice, the lymph node stage and the histological
assessment. Results let suggest that
CD99^+HLA-II^- is a marker of worst
prognostic since this phenotype is strongly linked to lymph node metastasis in
breast cancer.
Keywords: CD99, HLA-II, breast cancer, histological grade, lymph node metastasis
