الفهرس 
INTRODUCTIONOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Breast cancer remains one of the most prevalent cancers in women, despite major improvements in terms of prevention, diagnosis and treatment. Neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) has been used for the treatment of locally advanced and non- operable tumors to decrease tumor size. There is an increasing need for predictive markers of clinical response in daily practice.
Immune myeloid cells within tumor microenvironment (TME), especially monocytes and macrophages can contribute to cancer progression by promoting immunosuppression, angiogenesis, cancer cell survival, growth, invasion, and metastasis. These cells play a fundamental role in the response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) of breast cancer (BC) patients.
CD163 is a scavenger receptor that is considered as a highly specific marker for M2 macrophages. The soluble form of CD163 is intensively released into circulation by activated macrophages. It may be of promising clinical importance in estimating the severity of inflammation and treatment outcomes in most solid tumors.
In this study, the main aim was to evaluate whether the changes in monocytes markers and sCD163 in peripheral blood samples from patients with BC under NAC treatment could be useful as indicator of the efficacy of such treatment. In order to verify this purpose, peripheral blood mononuclear cells were isolated from 20 patients with invasive breast cancer (selected for NACT) and were used in both enumeration of CD14 and CD16 (by flow cytometry) and in assessment of mitogen-induced sCD163 (following a short-term culture) using a standardized ELISA technique.
Our results demonstrated a significant decrease in CD14% expression among BC patients compared to control group. In addition, a significant increase was observed in BC patients compared to control group as regards frequency of both CD16 and CD14+/CD16+ expression.
Moreover, our study showed that CD14% and CD16% expression increased while CD14/CD16 double positive expression decreased in BC patients after receiving NAC. The frequencies of these markers were associated with clinical response and demonstrated that BC patients with complete response (CR) had a statistically significant increase in the percentages of both CD14 and CD16 expressions together with a decrease in CD14/CD16 double positive monocytes compared to those with partial response (PR). Furthermore, there was a negative correlation between both CD14% and CD16% expression and CD14/CD16 double positive monocytes.
The present study showed a significant decreased in sCD163 after receiving NAC. BC patients with complete response (CR) had a statistically significant decrease in the serum level of sCD163 compared to those with partial response (PR) (p= <0.001*). In addition, the results show a negative correlation between serum level of sCD163 and CD16% expression on monocytes.