Clinical and Pathological Response to Neoadjuvant Anthracycline Based Chemotherapy in women with breast cancer.

Background: Neoadjuvant chemotherapy has been used as a primary treatment for locally advanced or inflammatory breast cancer, and recently extended to operable breast cancer. The aim of this study was to evaluate the predictive value of different histologic factors in breast cancer treated with neoadjuvant anthracycline chemotherapy in Tunisian women.

Methods: A total of 109 stage II and III breast cancer patients who received neoadjuvant anthracycline chemotherapy were enrolled in this study. Using pretreatment biopsy materials, histologic grade was recorded and immunohistochemical studies were performed for estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor and Her2neu. We analyzed the associations among this histologic factors and clinical and pathological complete response. Statistical analysis used is SEM logiciel.

Results: The overall clinical response was 63% (clinical partial response in 49% of cases and clinical complete response in 14% of cases). The pCR was 7%; in univariate analysis, clinical response rate by each factors were as follows: 63% in ER-positive tumors, 84% in ER-negative (P = 0.2), 59% in PgR-positive, 62% in PgR-negative (P = 0.3), 64% in HER2-positive, 62% in HER2-negative (P = 0.6), 60% in tumors of low nuclear grade and 63% in ones of high nuclear grade (P = 0.9).

Conclusions: Biological markers that reliably predict clinical and pathological response to primary systemic therapy may have considerable clinical potential. The future of neoadjuvant therapy lies in tailoring treatment to individual patients by identifying response predictors.