CD68 Macrophage Expression in Normal Breast Tissue and Cancer

Abstract

Breast cancer is a common disease and is the second leading cause of death in women. This type of cancer is usually hormonally driven by estrogen, progesterone, and HER2. Macrophages play a large role in the tumor microenvironment (TME). The aim of this study was to investigate the percent of macrophages in 32 normal breast tissues, 66 normal adjacent tissue (NAT), and 82 breast cancer tissues using the CD68-specific biomarker. Tissue microarrays (TMA) were created, which are composed of 2-mm cores from multiple patients mounted onto a single slide. The breast tissue samples were fixed, processed, microtomed, and stained with CD68. Unstained slides were immunostained using the Dako FLEX system. The slides were imaged using the Aperio Whole Slide Imaging platform and the tissues were evaluated using the positive pixel count algorithm (a quantitative image analysis system). The positivity of macrophages in the tissue samples were reported as a percentage, and compared across the three groups. It was found that the CD68 positivity in the normal and breast cancer tissue were even, and the NAT was lower. However, the three groups had overlapping standard deviations. Because difference between the percentages of each group was minimal and the deviations overlapped, it was concluded that there is no statistical difference between the three groups.