The Expression of EGFR Family Ligands in Breast Carcinomas

Abstract

Expression of EGF, HB-EGF, TGF-oc, HRG-oc, HRG-f1, and HRG-P3 in 100 frozen breast carcinoma materials was immunohistochemically studied. Among these tumors, 67% were positive for EGF, 53% for HB-EGF, 57% for TGF-a, 60% for HRGax, 53% for HRG-31, and 63% for HRG-f3 in the neoplastic epithelial cells. No significant associations between expression of the growth factors and clinicopathological features like tumor size, histologic grade, node status, ploidy, ER status, and c-erbB-4 expression were observed, with the exceptions that significant relations were present between EGF expression and tumor size (p = 0.01) and between HRG-P3 expression and node status (p =0.02). The expressions of these growth factors showed no associationwith cancer-specific survival by the Kaplan Meier analysis.