Clinical significance of p53 and bcl-2 protein coexpression phenotypes in molecular breast cancer subtypes of pre-menopausal and post-menopausal African-American women.

With the current classification of breast carcinoma into molecular subtypes with distinct prognosis and response to therapy, we sort to assess the clinical significance of p53 and bcl-2 coexpression phenotypes in invasive breast tumors and correlate this to the different molecular breast cancer subtypes in African-American women. We performed a retrospective analysis of data on p53 and bcl-2 expression. Results were correlated to molecular breast cancer subtypes, and clinicopathologic variables of prognostic significance. Our study sample included all African-American women diagnosed with breast cancer from 1998 to 2005. Twenty-seven (27.6%) per cent of cases in our study sample over-expressed p53, whereas 69.3 per cent over-expressed bcl-2 protein. A significant inverse correlation was observed between expression of p53 and bcl-2. Combined analysis of p53 and bcl-2 showed that 53.2 per cent of the tumors displayed p53(-)bcl-2(+) phenotype which was significantly associated with the luminal A subtype, whereas 11.6 per cent displayed the p53(+)bcl-2(-) phenotype which was significantly associated with the basal cell-like and Her-2/neu. Neither p53 expression nor bcl-2 expression individually or in combination were of independent prognostic significance. p53(+)bcl-2(-) phenotype is significantly correlated with the basal cell-like subtype and may be associated with the biologic aggressiveness of this cohort of molecular breast cancer.