Neutrophil Extracellular Traps Associate with Clinical Stages in Breast Cancer.

Recently, neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs), three-dimensional structures formed of neutrophil enzymes such as neutrophil elastase (NE) and nuclear components (DNA), have been associated with progression in different types of cancer. However, data remain scarce in breast cancer. Thus, the aim of this study was to associate NETs with clinical stages of breast cancer. A prospective analysis was performed in 45 plasma samples of female patients with newly diagnosed breast cancer. NE-DNA complexes were evaluated by ELISA. Optical density was dichotomized at the median for comparisons (low and high levels of NE-DNA). The most frequent clinical stage was localized (n = 28, 62%) followed by regional (n = 13, 29%) and distant (n = 4, 9%). Higher levels of NE-DNA complexes were observed in regional and distant stages compared to localized disease (68% vs 32%, p = 0.034). No differences were observed when comparing other clinical characteristics between both groups. We demonstrated that the levels of NETs increase in proportion to the stage of the disease, observing higher levels of NE-DNA complexes in regional and metastatic disease, which coincides with the proposed mechanism by which cancer progression and metastasis might result from the formation of NETs.

Association of PTP1B with Outcomes of Breast Cancer Patients Who Underwent Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy.

PTP1B is involved in the oncogenesis of breast cancer. In addition, neoadjuvant therapy has been widely used in breast cancer; thus, a measurement to assess survival improvement could be pathological complete response (pCR). Our objective was to associate PTP1B overexpression with outcomes of breast cancer patients who underwent neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Forty-six specimens were included. Diagnostic biopsies were immunostained using anti-PTP1B antibody. Expression was categorized as negative (<5%) and overexpression (≥5%). Patients' responses were graded according to the Miller-Payne system. Sixty-three percent of patients overexpressed PTP1B. There was no significant association between PTP1B overexpression and pCR (P = 0.2). However, when associated with intrinsic subtypes, overexpression was higher in human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-positive-enriched specimens (P = 0.02). Ten-year progression-free survival showed no differences. Our preliminary results do not show an association between PTP1B over-expression and pCR; however, given the limited sample and heterogeneous treatment in our cohort, this hypothesis cannot be excluded.