Clinical implications for nestin protein expression in breast cancer

Abstract

Recently, it was observed that nestin is preferentially expressed in basal/myoepithelial cells of the mammary gland, and that this intermediate filament may be used as a myoepithelial marker. However, the clinical and prognostic implications of nestin as a marker for breast cancer are still unclear. We examined mastectomy specimens from 150 breast cancers and matching, adjacent non-cancerous tissues using immunohistochemistry and western blotting. Overall, triple-negative breast cancers - that is, breast cancers that do not express estrogen receptors (ER), progesterone receptors (PR), or human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2/neu) - had higher expression rates for nestin than the other breast cancers (57.14%. vs 9.30%; P