Purpose: To evaluate locally versus centrally assessed estrogen (ER) and progesterone (PgR) receptor status and the impact of PgR on letrozole adjuvant therapy compared with tamoxifen in postmenopausal women with early breast cancer. Patients and Methods: Breast International Group (BIG) 1-98 randomly assigned 8,010 patients to four arms comparing letrozole and tamoxifen with sequences of each agent. The Central Pathology Office received material for 6,549 patients (82%), of which 79% were assessable (6,291 patients). Prognostic and predictive value of both local and central hormone receptor expression on disease-free survival (DFS) were evaluated among 3,650 assessable patients assigned to the monotherapy arms. Prognostic value and the treatment effect were estimated for centrally assessed ER and PgR expression levels using the Subpopulation Treatment Effect Pattern Plot. Results: Central review confirmed 97% of tumors as hormone receptor–positive (ER and/or PgR ≥10%). Of 105 tumors locally ER-negative, 73 were found to have more than 10% positive cells, and eight had 1% to 9%. Of 6,100 tumors locally ER positive, 66 were found to have no staining, and 54 had only 1% to 9%. Discordance was more marked for PgR than ER. Patients with tumors reclassified centrally as ER-negative, or as hormone receptor–negative, had poor DFS. Centrally assessed ER and PgR showed prognostic value. Among patients with centrally assessed ER-expressing tumors, letrozole showed better DFS than tamoxifen, irrespective of PgR expression level. Conclusion: Central review changed the assessment of receptor status in a substantial proportion of patients, and should be performed whenever possible in similar trials. PgR expression did not affect the relative efficacy of letrozole over tamoxifen.

Purpose: To evaluate the prognostic and predictive value of Ki-67 labeling index (LI) in a trial comparing letrozole (Let) with tamoxifen (Tam) as adjuvant therapy in postmenopausal women with early breast cancer.Patients and Methods: Breast International Group (BIG) trial 1-98 randomly assigned 8,010 patients to four treatment arms comparing Let and Tam with sequences of each agent. Of 4,922 patients randomly assigned to receive 5 years of monotherapy with either agent, 2,685 had primary tumor material available for central pathology assessment of Ki-67 LI by immunohistochemistry and had tumors confirmed to express estrogen receptors after central review. The prognostic and predictive value of centrally measured Ki-67 LI on disease-free survival (DFS) were assessed among these patients using proportional hazards modeling, with Ki-67 LI values dichotomized at the median value of 11%.Results: Higher values of Ki-67 LI were associated with adverse prognostic factors and with worse DFS (hazard ratio [HR; high:low] = 1.8; 95% CI, 1.4 to 2.3). The magnitude of the treatment benefit for Let versus Tam was greater among patients with high tumor Ki-67 LI (HR [Let:Tam] = 0.53; 95% CI, 0.39 to 0.72) than among patients with low tumor Ki-67 LI (HR [Let:Tam] = 0.81; 95% CI, 0.57 to 1.15; interaction P = .09).Conclusion: Ki-67 LI is confirmed as a prognostic factor in this study. High Ki-67 LI levels may identify a patient group that particularly benefits from initial Let adjuvant therapy.

BACKGROUND: Reliable predictors of metastatic involvement would enable a better selection of candidate patients for sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) and possibly allow identification of patients with such a low risk of axillary sentinel lymph node (SLN) involvement to be even spared SLNB.METHODS: The authors evaluated 4351 consecutive patients surgically treated for breast carcinoma who also underwent SLNB. Clinicopathologic features significantly associated with SLN metastases by univariate analysis were included in a multivariate model.RESULTS: By multivariate analysis, the prevalence of SLN metastases was associated directly with tumor size, multifocality, and with the occurrence of peritumoral vascular invasion (PVI; all P < 0.0001), and was associated inversely with a favorable histotype (P = 0.0007) and lack of progesterone receptors (P = 0.004). A predictive model based on the features more closely associated with SLN status documented that the patients with a favorable tumor type ≤ 1 cm in size and without PVI (n = 178 [4% of the population]) had the lowest risk of SLN metastases (9.5%) whereas patients with tumors > 2 cm and with PVI (n = 250 [5.7% of the population]) had the highest risk (77.2%) of SLN involvement.CONCLUSIONS: Tumor size and PVI emerged as the most powerful independent predictors of SLN metastases. Although no combination of features identified patients with a < 9.5% risk of SLN metastases, the current data may be used to tailor the management of patients with breast carcinoma with the aim of minimizing as much as possible the diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, thus improving the quality of life of the patients without any adverse effect on their survival rates. Cancer 2005 © 2004 American Cancer Society

Metabolomic profile of glycolysis and the pentose phosphate pathway identifies the central role of glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase in clear cell-renal cell carcinoma

To assess whether the risk for nonsentinel node metastases may be predicted, thus sparing a subgroup of patients with breast carcinoma and a positive sentinel lymph node (SLN) biopsy completion axillary lymph node dissection (ALND). The SLN is the only involved axillary lymph node in the majority of the patients undergoing ALND for a positive SLN biopsy. A model to predict the status of nonsentinel axillary lymph nodes could help tailor surgical therapy to those patients most likely to benefit from completion ALND. All the axillary sentinel and nonsentinel lymph nodes of 1228 patients were reviewed histologically and reclassified according to the current TNM classification of malignant tumors as bearing isolated tumor cells only, micrometastases, or (macro)metastases. The prevalence of metastases in nonsentinel lymph nodes was correlated to the type of SLN involvement and the size of the metastasis, the number of affected SLNs, and the prospectively collected clinicopathologic variables of the primary tumors. In multivariate analysis, further axillary involvement was significantly associated with the type and size of SLN metastases, the number of affected SLNs, and the occurrence of peritumoral vascular invasion in the primary tumor. A predictive model based on the characteristics most strongly associated with nonsentinel node metastases was able to identify subgroups of patients at significantly different risk for further axillary involvement. Patients with the most favorable combination of predictive factors still have no less than 13% risk for nonsentinel lymph node metastases and should be offered completion ALND outside of clinical trials of SLN biopsy without back-up axillary clearing.

Several small studies have reported that having a high percentage of breast tumor cells that express the proliferation antigen Ki-67 (ie, a high Ki-67 labeling index) predicts better response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy. However, the predictive value of a high Ki-67 labeling index for response to adjuvant chemotherapy is unclear. To investigate whether Ki-67 labeling index predicts response to adjuvant chemoendocrine therapy, we assessed Ki-67 expression in tumor tissue from 1924 (70%) of 2732 patients who were enrolled in two randomized International Breast Cancer Study Group trials of adjuvant chemoendocrine therapy vs endocrine therapy alone for node-negative breast cancer. A high Ki-67 labeling index was associated with other factors that predict poor prognosis. Among the 1521 patients with endocrine-responsive tumors, a high Ki-67 labeling index was associated with worse disease-free survival but the Ki-67 labeling index did not predict the relative efficacy of chemoendocrine therapy compared with endocrine therapy alone. Thus, Ki-67 labeling index was an independent prognostic factor but was not predictive of better response to adjuvant chemotherapy in these studies.