DNA content of human tumor cell nucleus: a study on fibroadenoma and carcinoma of the breast.

A microspectrophotometric evaluation of the DNA content of tumor cell nuclei was undertaken in 24 cases of fibroadenomas and 30 cases of carcinomas of the human breast. There was a general trend that fibroadenomas of the breast showed the DNA values lying in a diploid range, with limited deviation among the cells, while in carcinomas of the breast, the DNA values were slightly or definitely higher than the basic diploid value with a larger scatter from cell to cell. The modal DNA value from malignant tumors was distributed from hypodiploid to hypotetraploid ranges. Further, there was no direct correlation between the DNA content and the histopathological pattern of the tumor. There was also no tumor case which had a large amount of DNA such as tetraploidy or over tetraploidy in the breast tumors so far examined here.