Survivin as a predictive biomarker of complete pathologic response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy in patients with stage II and stage III breast cancer.

Introduction: Predictive biomarkers of response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy in patients with breast cancer are needed to better characterize tumors and enable more tailored therapies.

Methods: The expression levels of survivin, BCL-2, cyclin D1, ETS1, and PDEF in tumor samples obtained in the diagnostic biopsies of patients undergoing neoadjuvant chemotherapy for stage II and stage III disease were evaluated by immunohistochemistry (IHC). The mean expression score (range, 0-15) obtained by 3 different pathologists was used for analysis and correlated with complete pathologic response (pCR) and survival by standard univariate and multivariate methods.