PROLIFERATIVE ACTIVITY AND P53 EXPRESSION IN ADENOID CYSTIC CARCINOMAOF THE BREAST

Adenoid cystic carcinoma is a rare type of invasive breast carcinoma t hat has a good prognosis, We studied a series of four cases of adenoid cystic carcinoma in which we correlated the clinical and pathological features, The pathological features examined included light microscop y; electron microscopy; immunohistochemistry using antibodies to kerat in, vimentin, S100 protein, actin, estrogen and progesterone receptors , the proliferation marker MiB-1, and p53 suppressor protein; image cy tometric analysis for measurement of DNA ploidy; and molecular analysi s using polymerase chain reaction single strand conformation polymorph ism to assess point mutation of the p53 gene, All of the cases had a l ow nuclear grade, were negative for estrogen and progesterone receptor s, and were DNA diploid, Three of the cases showed no evidence of meta stases and had small primary tumors with low proliferative activity an d absence of p53 protein expression, In contrast, one of the cases sho wed axillary lymph node metastases and in this case the primary tumor was large with a higher proliferative activity and expression of p53 p rotein, suggesting that these factors might play a role in the biologi cal behavior of adenoid cystic carcinoma.