Glycoprotein CD44 expression and its association with survival in breast cancer

To investigate the clinical significance of CD44 expression (lymphocyte-homing receptor) in adenocarcinoma, deparaffinized sections from 198 female breast carcinomas were stained with Hermes-3 MoAb for CD44 glycoprotein. In 16% of the cancers most (> or = 90%) of the cancer cells stained positively for CD44, whereas the rest of the cancers were either heterogenous (46%) or negative (38%) in CD44 staining. Cancers with > 50% CD44 positive cells were more often poorly differentiated (grade 3) than those with < or = 50% positive cells (38 vs. 19%, P = 0.006), they had higher mitotic counts (P = 0.04), and were more often estrogen receptor negative (52 vs. 31%, P = 0.01). Among ductal not otherwise specified cancers and node-positive cancers strong CD44 expression was associated with poor outcome (P = 0.05 and 0.02, respectively). However, CD44 expression was not an independent prognostic factor in these subgroups in a multivariate analysis. Unlike in lymphomas the unfavorable prognosis associated with CD44 expression may not be explained by the greater metastatic potential of CD44-positive cells, because the difference in mortality between the groups appeared to diminish with time, and CD44 positivity was associated with aggressive histological features.