Clinicopathologic significance of excision repair cross-complementation 1 expression in patients treated with breast-conserving surgery and radiation therapy

Abstract

Purpose: The excision repair cross-complementation 1 (ERCC1) enzyme plays a rate-limiting role in the nucleotide excision repair pathway and is associated with resistance to platinum-based chemotherapy in cancers of the head and neck and the lung. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the clinicopathologic and prognostic significance of ERCC1 expression in a cohort of early-stage breast cancer patients treated with breast conservation therapy.

Methods and materials: Paraffin specimens from 504 women with early-stage breast cancer treated with breast conservation therapy were constructed into tissue microarrays. The array was stained for estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR), and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) and ERCC1. This was then correlated with clinicopathologic factors and outcomes data.

Results: ERCC-1 expression was evaluable in 366 cases (72%). In this group, 32% and 38% of patients received adjuvant chemotherapy and hormonal therapy, respectively. Increased ERCC-1 expression was found to be correlated with ER positivity (p < 0.005), lower T stage (p < 0.017), nodal negativity (p < 0.013), age >50 (p < 0.006), reduced use of adjuvant chemotherapy (p < 0.02), and increased use of adjuvant hormonal therapy (p < 0.004). ERCC1 expression did not correlate with locoregional recurrence-free survival, distant metastasis-free survival, cause-specific survival, or overall survival. In patients who were both ERCC1-negative and -positive, the use of chemotherapy predicted for worse distant metastasis-free survival (p = 0.05 and p = 0.07, respectively) but not cause-specific survival or overall survival.

Conclusions: Although ERCC1 expression did not predict for outcome measures in this dataset, overexpression correlated with favorable prognostic factors such as ER positivity, lower T stage, nodal negativity, and age >50. To our knowledge, this is the first study investigating ERCC1 expression in patients receiving adjuvant radiation therapy for breast cancer.