Flow cytometric DNA measurement and cytomorphometric analysis of formalin fixed rat mammary tumours

Archival paraffin embedded material was used to examine whether additional quantitative criteria would be helpful to discriminate between histologically benign and malignant rat mammary tumours. To this end nuclear DNA content expressed as DNA ploidy index (DI) was measured using flow cytometry (FCM). A total of 63 benign and malignant mammary tumours were investigated. Thirteen out of 38 (34%) mammary carcinomas were DNA aneuploid against 0 out of 25 benign mammary tumours. Aneuploidy was not significantly increased in tumours showing histological signs of greater malignancy such as cribriform-comedo type or invasive growth. In addition to DI other quantitative criteria indicative for malignancy, such as mitotic count and nuclear morphometric characteristics, were estimated in 24 benign and malignant tubulopapillary tumours, a category where the histological classification may be difficult. It appeared that five out of nine noninvasive tubulopapillary carcinomas and six out of seven invasive carcinomas had abnormal values for either DI, mitotic count or nuclear area or for a combination of these parameters. Each single parameter however was abnormal only in a minority of the malignant tumours. In this respect our data are in accordance with the fact that rat mammary carcinomas are clinically and histologically less malignant than their human counterparts.