Association of maspin expression with the malignancy grade and tumor vascularization in breast cancer tissues

Maspin belongs to a tumor suppressing protein which is usually expressed hi ghly in myoepithelial cells, and is significantly downregulated in breast c ancer cells. We focused on identifying the correlation between maspin expre ssion and the clinicopathological features of human breast cancer tissues u sing immunohistochemistry. There was a significant correlation in that masp in-positive tumor specimens showed a low pathological grade of malignancy, such as a lower infiltration of the tumor into the surrounding tissue and a downregulation of c-erbB2 expression. Moreover, maspin-positive cases show ed a significant decrease in tumor vessels positively stained with anti-fac tor VIII-related antigen antibody. These results suggest that maspin produc tion in myoepithelial cells could downregulate the malignant phenotype of b reast cancer. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.