Mesothelin expression in triple negative breast carcinomas correlates significantly with basal-like phenotype, distant metastases and decreased survival. Academic Article uri icon

Overview

abstract

  • Mesothelin is a cell surface associated antigen expressed on mesothelial cells and in some malignant neoplasms. Mesothelin-targeted therapies are in phase I/II clinical trials. The clinicopathologic and prognostic significance of mesothelin expression in triple negative breast carcinomas (TNBC) has not been fully assessed. We evaluated the expression of mesothelin and of basal markers in tissue microarrays of 226 TNBC and 88 non-TNBC and assessed the clinicopathologic features of mesothelin-expressing breast carcinomas. Furthermore, we investigated the impact of mesothelin expression on the disease-free and overall survival of patients with TNBC. We found that mesothelin expression is significantly more frequent in TNBC than in non-TNBC (36% vs 16%, respectively; p = 0.0006), and is significantly correlated with immunoreactivity for basal keratins, but not for EGFR. Mesothelin-positive and mesothelin-negative TNBC were not significantly different by patients' race, tumor size, histologic grade, tumor subtype, lymphovascular invasion and lymph node metastases. Patients with mesothelin-positive TNBC were older than patients with mesothelin-negative TNBC, developed more distant metastases with a shorter interval, and had significantly lower overall and disease-free survival. Based on our results, patients with mesothelin-positive TNBC could benefit from mesothelin-targeted therapies.

publication date

  • December 15, 2014

Research

keywords

  • Breast
  • GPI-Linked Proteins
  • Triple Negative Breast Neoplasms

Identity

PubMed Central ID

  • PMC4266616

Scopus Document Identifier

  • 84918568011

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

  • 10.1371/journal.pone.0114900

PubMed ID

  • 25506917

Additional Document Info

volume

  • 9

issue

  • 12