Chemokine C-C motif ligand 18 expression correlates with tumor malignancy in breast cancer

Purpose of the study

To investigate whether CCL18 is involved in breast cancer, and the relationship between CCL18 and MVD (MVD was recognized by CD34) which is a well-accepted angiogenic maker of multiple cancers including breast cancer.

Patients and methods

Immunohistochemistry staining for CCL18 and CD34 was performed on 179 cases, including 29 normal cases as control, 47 cases with benign breast diseases, and 103 cases with breast cancer.

Results

We found that CCL18 was significantly up-regulated in breast cancer samples as compared with benign tumors or normal breast tissues. Moreover, the expression level of CCL18 increased with the size of tumors, the number of lymph node metastasis, and advancing tumor stage, suggesting that CCL18 expression correlates with tumor malignancy scales. At the same time, we found that MVD was also significantly over-expressed in cancer tissues as compared with normal control group and benign tumor group, but it was not significantly differentially expressed among tumors with different malignancy scale like CCL18, while the expression of MVD in CCL18 positive breast cancer cases was higher than in the CCL18 negative breast cancer cases (P = 0.016, P < 0.05).

Conclusion

CCL18 is involved in the development of breast cancer. CCL18 is a better biomarker than MVD in determining whether the tumor is malignant and the severity of malignancy of breast cancer.