Petra El Hajj
Lebanese University, Lebanon
Title: Evaluation of androgen receptor expression by immunohistochemistry in breast cancer tissues from Lebanese patients
Biography
Biography: Petra El Hajj
Abstract
The most aggressive type of breast cancer is the triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) due to its lack of hormone receptors, HER2 amplification and targeted therapy. Recent studies have demonstrated the implication of androgen receptor (AR) in prognosis and therapy of TNBC although this has not yet been completely elucidated. The current work aimed at determining the retrospective study in Lebanese TNBC patients, the expression of AR in 78 TNBC tissues by immunohistochemical examination and correlating its expression with clinico-pathological parameters. Bivariate analyses showed an interesting inverse correlation between AR expression and tumor size (p=0.004), mitotic score (0.02) and a positive association of AR with patients’ age at diagnosis (p=0.03), suggesting anti-proliferative role in TNBC. Moreover, tumor size showed a positive correlation with mitotic score but showed no association with tumor grade, lympho-vascular invasion or histologic type. A positive correlation was seen between tumor grade and mitotic score. In vitro studies are ongoing to assess growth and to determine signaling pathways in the androgen AR proliferation axis at RNA and protein levels.