Nerve growth factor receptor immunoreactivity in breast cancer patients

Nerve growth factor receptor (NGF-R) has been shown to have antiproliferati ve, differentiative, or apoptotic effects on some types of tumor cells, whe reas in others it may have mitogenic activity The immunohistochemical distr ibution of NGF-R was analyzed in a series of tissue samples from breast can cer patients and its relationship with other clinical and pathological para meters was studied. The distribution of NGF-R was evaluated by immunohistoc hemistry in frozen tissue samples of 46 breast cancer patients (ME20-4 mono clonal anti-NGF-R). NGF-R immunoreactivity was localized in the plasma memb rane of myoepithelial cells, differentiated ducts, neoplastic cells, blood vessels, and nerve fibers in 26 patients (57%). Less differentiated neoplas tic tissues were usually NGF-R negative. NGF-R immunoreactivity was associa ted with estrogen receptor (ER) status (p = 0.02), small tumor dimension (p T) (p = 0.04), low histologic grade (G1-G2) (p < 0.05), old age (p = 0.02), menopause (p = 0.02), and long disease-free survival (DFS) (median follow up 86 months; p = 0.03; independently from ER, pT age, menopause by multiva riate analysis, p = 0.0078). The expression of NGF-R immunoreactivity by br east cancer patients with long DFS may represent a crucial step both in the differentiation status of neoplasia and in the host immune mechanism contr olling tumor growth and metastasization.