In addition, we detected a high number of known CDH1 polymorphisms (n = 62), some of them more frequent in patients with lobular (55%) than in those with invasive ductal carcinoma (27%).
The objective of the present study was to investigate and analyze the epithelial-cadherin (E-cadherin) expression in invasive ductal carcinoma of the breast, and to analyze the associations between the expression and clinicopathological characteristics of lymph node metastasis and the prognosis of breast cancer.
Promoter hypermethylation of 8 tumor suppressor genes (RASSF1A, APC, HIN1, BRCA1, CYCLIND2, RARbeta, CDH1 and TWIST1) and DNA methylation for three repetitive elements (LINE1, Sat2 and Alu) were analyzed in invasive ductal carcinoma of the breast, paired adjacent normal tissue and WBC from 40 breast cancer patients by the MethyLight assay.
Using methylation-specific PCR, aberrant hypermethylation of p16 and CDH1 in tumor and plasma was analyzed and correlated with levels of serum protein markers, carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) and carcinoma antigen 15-3 (CA15.3), in 36 patients with invasive ductal breast cancer.
In breast cancer, inactivating point mutations in the E-cadherin gene are frequently found in invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC) but never in invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC).