Thesis (M.Sc.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Medicine - Department of Internal Medicine

Background: breast cancer (BC) is the most common type of cancer among women world-wide and leading cause of cancer related deaths. Estrogen (ER) & progesterone (PR) positive breast tumors are characterized by a gene expression profile exhibiting profound differences from that of ER& PR negative tumors. One of the genes whose expression is the most highly correlated with that of ER in breast cancer encodes the transcription factor GATA-3. Objectives: to study the immunohistochemical expression of GATA3 in invasive breast carcinoma and its relation to the available clincopathological features, also to compare between the immunohistochemical expression of GATA3 and (ER,PR) in invasive breast carcinomas and to detect the association between GATA-3 and the included breast cancer molecular subtypes. Materials and methods: 50 formalin fixed paraffin embedded BC tissue sections were randomly collected. All the available data were collected from the patients{u2019} reports. Cases were classified into two equal groups; Gp (1) ER, PR positive, GP (2) ER, PR negative. The paraffin blocks were sectioned, stained with hematoxylin & eosin stains for histologic evaluation. Additional sections were immunostained with GATA-3. GATA-3 expression was studied in the tumor cells. Results: GATA-3 expression was detected in 88% of cases of GP (1) and 56% of cases of GP (2), showing direct association with ER & PR and significant association with luminal like breast tumors. GATA-3 show inverse association with Ki-67 and failed to show significant association with any of the clinicopathological parameters. Conclusion: GATA-3 is an important luminal marker showing strong association with ER and PR in breast cancer

Issued also as CD