Fig. 1: Polysialic acid expression in primary breast tumors. | npj Breast Cancer

Fig. 1: Polysialic acid expression in primary breast tumors.

From: The different prognostic significance of polysialic acid and CD56 expression in tumor cells and lymphocytes identified in breast cancer

Fig. 1: Polysialic acid expression in primary breast tumors.The alternative text for this image may have been generated using AI.

A Immunohistochemical staining of polysialic acid in normal tissue and breast cancer tissue. Representative images of normal breast tissue and tumors showing within each tissue or tumor category of low expression (top row) and high expression (bottom row). Cores are shown alongside higher magnification insets from the same core. B Analysis of polysialic acid expression (H-Score) in normal breast tissue and tumor cells categorized into molecular subtype. Luminal A (n = 60), Luminal B (n = 9), HER2+ (n = 12), and triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) (n = 42). Bars indicate medians and ±SEM, ****P < 0.0001, Kruskal–Wallis test. Identification of polysialic positive tumor infiltrating lymphocytes in the tumor microenvironment by immunohistochemical staining of polysialic acid (C) and CD3 (D). Representative images are shown alongside higher magnification insets from the same core. Arrows point to lymphocytes positive for polySia (C) and regions of lymphocytes positive for both polySia and CD3 (D). E CD3 positive tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes express polySia. Breast tumor tissue was immunostained for CD3 (red) and polySia (green), followed by a nuclei stain (blue). Bottom row represents zooms from corresponding image in the top row. Arrows point to CD3-positive cells (red) which are also positive for polySia (green), and can be visualized as yellow in the overlay. Scale bar = 100 µm. F and G Analysis of polysialic acid expression (H-Score) on tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes categorized by molecular subtype (Luminal A, n = 36; Luminal B, n = 6; HER2+, n = 8; TNBC, n = 31) (F) or estrogen receptor expression (strong, n = 21; weak, n = 51; moderate:n = 13) (G). Representative images of polySia TIL expression in ER positive (H; arrows points to lymphocytes with low/no polySia) and ER negative (I; arrows point to yellow/polySia positive lymphocytes). Bars indicate medians and ±SEM, p values shown from Tukey’s test. Scale bar = 200 µm (cores) and 50 or 20 µm (insets).

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