Tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase-4 is elevated in early-stage breast cancers with accelerated progression and poor clinical course.

An increasing number of breast cancer patients are diagnosed with small, localized, early-stage tumors. These patients are typically thought to have a good prognosis for long-term disease-free survival, but epidemiological studies indicate that up to 30% may have a recurrence within 3 to 5 years of diagnosis. Identifying patients with a high risk of recurrence and/or progression is important because they could be more aggressively treated at diagnosis to improve their chances for disease-free survival.

Frequent mutations in the mitochondrial control region DNA in breast tissue.

It has been suggested that the extent of mitochondrial DNA mutations might be useful in the prognosis of cancer outcome and/or the response to certain therapies. In order to investigate whether a high incidence of mutations exists in mitochondrial DNA of breast cancer tissues, we screened three regions of the mitochondrial genome by PCR amplification followed by DNA sequence analysis. Laser capture microdissection was used to isolate pure populations of both tumor cells and normal cells from paraffin embedded specimens.