Ebili HO ,Iyawe VO ,Iyawe VO ,Banjo AAF ,Salami BS ,Rakha EA ,Nolan C ,Ellis IO ,Green AR
Background: The expression of the cadherins have been shown to have both clinicopathological and prognostic significance in breast cancer from different ethnic populations. However, the clinicopathological and prognostic significance of the cadherins expression in Nigerian breast cancer (BC) have hitherto not been determined. The aim of this study was therefore to describe the expression patterns of E- and P-cadherin in Nigerian and United Kingdom (UK) BC cases and to compare the clinicopathological and prognostic significance of the cadherins between the two cohorts.
Methods: Tissue microarray of about 266 formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded Nigerian and 301 UK BC samples with well-characterized clinicopathological indices were subjected to immunohistochemical staining for E- and P-cadherins and other biomarkers. These biomarkers were correlated with the patients’ clinicopathological and prognostic data using the appropriate statistical tests on SPSS. A p value of < 0.05 was taken as statistically significant.
Results: A lower rate of E-cadherin expression was found in the Nigerian cohort (29.2%) compared to their UK counterparts (54.8%). However, the rate of P-cadherin expression was similar in both Nigerian (53.4%) and UK (52.9%) series. While E-cadherin expression showed no pathobiological significance in the Nigerian cases, it was associated with favourable clinicopathological features in the UK cohort. P-cadherin on the other hand was associated with adverse clinicopathological features, including the triple-negative and basal-like BC subtype in both BC populations. However, we found no prognostic significance for either E-cadherin or P-cadherin in both BC cohorts.
Conclusion: While P-cadherin expression is high in both the Nigerian and UK BC cohorts and might therefore function as a biomarker for the basal-like BC, E-cadherin expression was associated with favourable clinicopathological indices in UK, but not in the Nigerian, cohorts.