Dados do Trabalho

Título

VALIDATION OF IMMUNOPHENOTYPING BY FLOW CYTOMETRY FOR THE INVESTIGATION OF DIAGNOSTIC AND PROGNOSTIC MARKERS FOR BREAST CANCER

Título em Inglês

Introdução

Introduction: Due to the high prevalence of breast cancer, it has a major financial impact on health systems. Currently, the diagnosis is made by morphological and immunohistochemical analysis (IHC). However, this methodology has some limitations. Therefore, methodologies capable of rapid and safe detection of tumor cells, which can assist those already used, are needed.

Objetivos

Objective: To validate immunophenotyping by flow cytometry (FC) for investigation of diagnostic and prognostic markers for breast cancer; and to investigate lymphocytes subtypes infiltrated in the tumor and its relationship with tumor development.

Métodos

Method: 52 breast tumor samples were sectioned and macerated in phosphate-saline buffer and stained with antibodies against estradiol (RE), progesterone (RP), HER2, Ki67, CD3, CD4, CD8 and CD45 receptors and analyzed by FC. All results were compared with IHC (reference method) in relation to sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV), except for Ki67, where bias was compared between methodologies and correlation between lymphocyte subtypes and tumor characteristics.

Resultados

Results: The comparison of the CF with the IHC for each marker presented the RE analysis (sensitivity: 75%, specificity: 90%, PPV: 96.7%, VPN: 47.4%); PR analysis (sensitivity: 72%, specificity: 70%, PPV: 79.3%, VPN: 60.8%); analysis of HER2 (sensitivity: 80%, specificity: 90.2%, PPV: 66.7%, VPN: 94.9%). The analysis of Ki67 by FC was shown to be equivalent to IHC, with the advantage of not having an observational bias. No correlations were observed between the molecular subtype intratumor lymphocyte population profile and the tumor histological grade.

Conclusões

Conclusion: The results show the FC's ability to safely and quickly detect the breast cancer markers used in clinical practice. It is believed that the use of CF, in conjunction with morphological analysis and IHC, can overcome the individual limitations of each of the methodologies and provide reliable results in a faster and more efficient way, which will result in faster diagnoses and more accurate prognosis, directly benefiting patients.

Palavras Chave

Área

DETECTION / DIAGNOSIS - Pathology