A comparison of human breast cancer cell kinetics measured by flow cytometry and thymidine labeling

Flow cytometric determination of tumor ploidy and S-phase fraction following collagenase dissociation and thymidine labeling was performed on 75 consecutive breast cancers. Estrogen and progesterone receptor levels and routine histologic examination also were obtained on each tumor. Cell viability following collagenase dissociation varied from 13 to 95% with a mean of 71%. Thirty-six tumors were diploid, four tetraploid, and four hypertetraploid, and the remainder had DNA indices between 1.1 and 1.9. There was no significant correlation between tumor ploidy and tumor size or estrogen receptor positivity or negativity. The percentage of cells in S-phase varied from 1.2 to 20.0% with a mean of 6.0% utilizing a rectilinear model for histogram analysis that integrated a 10-contiguous channel sample containing the lowest number of cells in S-phase (S-pFL). The mean S-pFL of diploid carcinomas (3.43%) was significantly lower than that of hyperdiploid carcinomas (8.38%). There was good correlation between S-phase fraction determined by thymidine-labeling index (TLI) and S-pFL (r = 0.772, p = 0.0001). S-pFL predicted whether a tumor would be above or below median TLI with an accuracy of 90.5%. Estrogen receptor-negative cancers tended to have higher TLIs and S-pFLs than estrogen receptor-positive cancers; however, there was no correlation between progesterone receptor positivity or negativity and TLI and S-pFL.