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Updated: Aug 7, 2026
Obtaining Cancer Stem Cell Spheres from Gynecological and Breast Cancer Tumors
Published on: March 1, 2020
Stromal, rather than epithelial cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) expression is associated with overall survival of breast
Justyna Urban, Łukasz Kuźbicki, Grzegorz Szatkowski
1Department of Medical Biology, Faculty of Biology and Environment Protection, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Lwowska 1, 87-100 Toruń, Poland. chwirot@biol.uni.torun.pl.
Background:
Prognostic value of enhanced COX-2 expression in breast cancer has been controversial for a long time. The opinions vary widely between studies. Moreover, significant majority of studies considered only COX-2 expression in cancer epithelial cells.
Methods:
We examined the prognostic value of COX-2 expression in both epithelial and stromal cells using three different antibodies and three algorithms of immunohistochemical scoring and categorizing the tumours into COX-2 overexpressing groups.
Results:
Our results demonstrate that COX-2 expression in stromal cells is independent prognostic factor indicating worse overall survival of patients. Such a result was obtained using each of the three antibodies and two of the algorithms used for evaluations of COX-2 expression levels. We also show that immunohistochemical assessment of the prognostic value of COX-2 expression in cancer epithelial cells depends to a large extent on a combination of primary antibodies and algorithms used for determination of the COX-2 over-expressing tumours.
Conclusions:
Our results indicate that stromal expression of COX-2 is independent prognostic parameter relatively insensitive to variations in sensitivity of antibodies used for its determination. Wide scatter of the published results concerning prognostic value of COX-2 expression in breast cancer tissues seems to be due to a large extent to multitude of antibodies and scoring algorithms used by different groups.
