Children of Chernobyl.

The variation in survival of women with clinically similar breast cancers may lead to difficulty in clinical management so it is important to recognise factors which indicate the prognosis. Immunoperoxidase staining patterns of primary breast tumours using monoclonal antibody NCRC-11 have been shown to relate to overall survival (Ellis et al., 1985) but the results have not been reproducible in other centres. In this study paraffin sections of 483 primary breast cancers were stained with NCRC-11 and 3E1.2 using an immunoperox-idase system. The tumour staining patterns were compared with overall survival using life tables and tested for relative prognostic significance by Cox's multivariate analysis. NCRC-I related to survival in all 483 cases (X2 5.8, P = 0.02) but both antibodies achieved maximum prognostic significance in lymph node negative patients) in whom no other factor was more significant. Immunoperoxidase staining patterns produced by monoclonal antibodies NCRC-11 and 3E1.2 are important prognostic factors in breast cancer. The survival of women with clinically similar breast tumours may vary widely. In consequence the choice of treatment, the counselling of the patient and the interpretation of the results of clinical trials increasingly rely on laboratory tests of tumour biology in addition to clinical signs. Of all prognostic factors the histological diagnosis of lymph node metastases is the factor which relates most strongly to a poor prognosis and additionally the number and level of involved nodes affects survival (Fisher et al., 1983). Factors relating to histo-logical differentiation and hormone receptor status have also been found to have prognostic significance (Elston, 1984; Bryan et al., 1986) but this in the former is observer dependent (Gilchrist & Kalish, 1985) and in the latter probably only applies in lymph node positive cases (Williams et al., 1987). There is therefore a need to discover other prognostic factors which will help in patient management and in understanding more of the biology of breast cancer. This paper describes the investigation of the prognostic value of mono-clonal antibodies (MoAbs) NCRC-11 and 3E1.2 in 483 women with primary breast cancer. Both of these MoAbs are of the anti-Epithelial Membrane Antigen (EMA) type and their characterisations and clinical uses have been described The synthesis of EMA by mammary acini and ducts is thought to be a specialised function and therefore tumours which contain EMA in abundance may be better differentiated and hence have a better prognosis than those in which it is less plentiful. In …