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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Oncol.
Sec. Breast Cancer
Volume 14 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fonc.2024.1458124

Vitamin D Receptor Is Associated With Prognostic Characteristics Of Breast Cancer After Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy-An Observational Study

Provisionally accepted
Joanna Streb Joanna Streb 1,2*Agnieszka Łazarczyk Agnieszka Łazarczyk 2Przemysław Hałubiec Przemysław Hałubiec 2Anna Streb-Smoleń Anna Streb-Smoleń 2Julita Ciuruś Julita Ciuruś 2Magdalena Ulatowska-Bialas Magdalena Ulatowska-Bialas 2Martyna Trzeszcz Martyna Trzeszcz 3,4Kamil Konopka Kamil Konopka 2Diana Hodorowicz-Zaniewska Diana Hodorowicz-Zaniewska 2Joanna Szpor Joanna Szpor 2
  • 1 Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland
  • 2 Jagiellonian University Medical College, Kraków, Lesser Poland, Poland
  • 3 Jan Mikulicz-Radecki University Teaching Hospital, Wroclaw, Poland
  • 4 Corfamed Woman’s Health Center, Wroclaw, Poland

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Background: Breast cancer (BC) is the most commonly diagnosed malignant tumor in women. The disease and its subsequent treatment pose a serious burden on the quality of life of patients. Neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) has become one of the crucial strategies for the management of BC. Since the identification of the vitamin D receptor (VDR) in mammary tissues, extensive mechanistic research has been conducted on its function. The expression of VDR in BC cells and the tumor microenvironment could be a new prognostic factor for BC after NAC. Patients and Methods: This observational, single-center study compared data from clinical and histopathological records of 111 female subjects with the expression of VDR in different cellular and tissue components of breast specimens obtained from surgery after NAC. VDR expression was evaluated using an immunoreactive score assigned after immunohistochemistry. Intergroup comparisons and logistic regression were used to identify associations between VDR expression and clinicopathological features of BC.Results: We found that the expression of VDR is associated with various clinical features (i.e., age, menopausal status, and NAC cycle number) and characteristics of prognostic significance, such as residual cancer burden class. Logistic regression analysis revealed that the expression of VDR in the nuclei and cytoplasm of surrounding normal mammary cells predicted vascular invasion and lymph node involvement.The expression of VDR in tumor cells and their microenvironment is related to the clinicopathological characteristics of BC after NAC.

    Keywords: breast cancer, Neoadjuvant chemotherapy, vitamin D receptor, Vitamin D, Residual cancer burden, pathological response Abstract

    Received: 01 Jul 2024; Accepted: 04 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Streb, Łazarczyk, Hałubiec, Streb-Smoleń, Ciuruś, Ulatowska-Bialas, Trzeszcz, Konopka, Hodorowicz-Zaniewska and Szpor. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Joanna Streb, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.