Correlation of the fibroblast growth factor-inducible 14 receptor and progranulin as prognostic biological markers in ductal invasive breast cancer: Immunohistochemical study

Abstract

Background: The Fn14 fibroblast growth factor-inducible 14 (Fn14) can stimulate cell migration and promote cancer lessions. Progranulin (GP88) protein has been identified as an epidermal growth factor and participates in many biological processes. The aim of the present work was to investigate the immunohistochemical expression of Fn14 and GP88 proteins in relation to the clinical parameters in women's invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC) and to explore their role as novel prognostic biomarkers.

Methods: The qualitative and quantitative immunohistochemical techniques were used to evaluate the expression levels of Fn14 and GP88 in 100 fresh samples of Egyptian women who had breast lesions. They were divided into three groups: control healthy tissues (10 samples from woman lesions), benign group (30 cases), and IDC group (60 cases).

Results: The histopathological results of 60 cases with IDC have been reported with 45 cases being grade Ⅱ and 15 cases being grade Ⅲ. The immunohistochemical results showed that the degree of strong positive staining for both markers was increased in grade Ⅲ compared to that in grade Ⅱ. The integrated optical density was significantly increased in grade Ⅲ (p < 0.05). Also, the result revealed a highly significant correlation between the two markers and the tumor size, grades, and lymph node metastasis, as well as a correlation to normal and benign breast lesions.

Conclusion: The quantitative immunohistochemistry of Fn14 and GP88 proteins revealed the correlation between the two markers and clinical parameters. Therefore, the two markers may be serviceable as prognostic and therapeutic markers in IDC patients.

Keywords

immunohistochemical technique / integrated optical density (IOD) / Fn14 protein / GP88 protein / invasive ductal carcinoma

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