p53 expression in pretreatment specimen predicts response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy including anthracycline and taxane in patients with primary breast cancer.

While clinical and pathologic responses are important prognostic parameters, biological markers from core needle biopsy (CNB) are needed to predict neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) response, to individualize treatment, and to achieve maximal efficacy. We retrospectively evaluated the cases of 183 patients with primary breast cancer who underwent surgery after NAC (anthracycline and taxane) at the National Cancer Center Hospital (NCCH). We analyzed EGFR, HER2, and p53 expression and common clinicopathological features from the CNB and surgical specimens of these patients. These biological markers were compared between sensitive patients (pathological complete response;pCR) and insensitive patients (clinical no change;cNC and clinical progressinve disease;cPD). In a comparison between the 9 (5%) sensitive patients and 30 (16%) insensitive patients, overexpression of p53 but not overexpression of either HER2 or EGFR was associated with a good response to NAC. p53 (p＝0.045) and histological grade 3 (p＝0.011) were important and significant predictors of the response to NAC. The correspondence rates for histological type, histological grade 3, ER, PgR, HER2, p53, and EGFR in insensitive patients between CNB and surgical specimens were 70%, 73%, 67%, 70%, 80%, 93%, and 73%. The pathologic response was significantly associated with p53 expression and histological grade 3. The correspondence rate of p53 expression between CNB and surgical specimens was higher than that of other factors. We conclude that the level of p53 expression in the CNB was an effective and reliable predictor of treatment response to NAC.