Applicability of flow cytometry in breast cancer

The cumulative evidence indicates that flow cytometry can provide important information about the behavior of breast tumors. A particularly appealing aspect of this technology is the ability to determine flow cytometric parameters on fresh surgical samples, frozen biopsy specimens, and archival paraffin-embedded blocks. However, several issues regarding the standardization of tissue preparation and the cell cycle analyses must be addressed before flow cytometry can be routinely applied on a wide scale. Quality control standards are currently being discussed that will help to reduce interlaboratory variability, particularly with respect to absolute values of S-phase fraction.