A case of primary neuroendocrine breast carcinoma that responded to neo-adjuvant chemotherapy

Abstract

Primary neuroendocrine breast carcinoma (NEBC) is a very rare type of breast cancer. Two characteristic biomarkers, namely, CgA and Syn, should be immunohistochemically detected to diagnose NEBC. In this study, a 43-year-old woman with a large mass of 8.3 cm × 2.9 cm in her right breast was reported. The patient was pathologically diagnosed with NEBC after specific markers, including CgA and Syn, as well as few differential markers, such as CK7, ER, PR, C-erbB-2, NSE, and E-cadherin, were immunohistochemically detected. The patient showed a remarkable response to four cycles of neo-adjuvant chemotherapy (partial response based on RECIST criteria) and sequentially underwent modified radical mastectomy. Moreover, the diagnosis and treatment of NEBC based on this case and available related literature were discussed.

Keywords

neuroendocrine carcinoma / neo-adjuvant therapy / breast

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Acknowledgements

This study is partly supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program, Grant No. 2011CB707705), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 31271068 and 81302331), and Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory on Breast Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment Research.

Xiaolong Wei, Chunfa Chen, Didi Xi, Jinwen Bai, Wenhe Huang, Luoxiang Rong, Mingyao Wu, and Guojun Zhang declare no conflict of interest. All of the procedures were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (The Ethics Committee of the Cancer Hospital of Shantou University Medical College) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975 (as revised in 2000). Informed consent was obtained for the participation of the patient in the study.

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2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg