CELLULAR SOCIOLOGY OF PROLIFERATING TUMOR-CELLS IN INVASIVE DUCTAL BREAST-CANCER

OBJECTIVE: The topology of proliferating cells in tissue sections of b reast cancers was studied as the static expression of the cellular soc iology of distinct subpopulations of tumor cells. With the terms neigh borhood and connectivity, an attempt was made to describe the mutual i nterrelations of cycling tumor cells objectively in different prognost ic subgroups of invasive ductal breast carcinomas. STUDY DESIGN: For t hese studies the spatial distribution of Ki-67 (Mib1)-positive tumor c ells was investigated by means of Voronoi tesselation, minimum spannin g tree techniques, cluster analysis and second-order stereology in a s eries of 80 breast tumors. Thirty-nine basic features were used for de scribing the topology of tumor cells with different degrees of Mib-1 r eactivity. RESULTS: Multivariate analyses demonstrated different proli feration patterns associated with tumor size, Modal status, histopatho logic grade, DNA ploidy and flow cytometric proliferation variables. C ONCLUSION: Independent of the spatial organization of the tumor cells, their tissue pattern of proliferation activity correlated with the tu mor properties.