Abstract:Objective To understand the relationship between the clinicopathological features of breast cancer and the expression of vasculogenic mimicry (VM ) and CD8+T cells. Futher to explore the correlation between VM and immune microenvironment. Methods 60 cases of breast cancer tissue samples were collected to make tissue chip. The expression of VM was detected by CD31/PAS double staining. IHC was used to assess the expression of CD8+T cells.The relationship among VM expression, CD8+T cell expression and clinicopathological characteristics were analyzed, so as to infer the relationship between VM and CD8+T cells. Results Among 60 cases of breast cancer tissue samples, VM was detected in 24 cases (40%). The positive rate of VM in pathlogical grade G3 was 63.2%, while it was 29.3% in tissues from G1 and G2. The difference was statistically significant (χ2=6.213,P=0.013).The positive detection rate of VM in stage Ⅲ (54.5%) was significantly higher than that in stage Ⅰ/Ⅱ (χ2=6.231,P=0.044). The positive expression of VM in triple negative type was significantly higher than that in other molecular types, and the difference was statistically significant (χ2=14.0,P<0.001).There was no significant difference in the detection rate of VM with age and histological types.The positive expression of CD8+T cells was detected in 26 cases (43.3%). The positive expression of CD8+T cells in triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) was significantly lower than that in other molecular subtypes, and the difference was statistically significant (χ2=7.454,P=0.006). There was no significant difference in the expression of CD8+ T cells among age, histological type, pathological grade and clinical stage. There was a significant difference in the expression of CD8+ T cells between VM negative and positive in the whole samples (χ2=11.584,P<0.001), but there was no significant difference in TNBC samples (χ2=1.313,P=0.252). Conclusion VM formation is more common in advanced and poorly differentiated breast cancer, especially in TNBC, and CD8+T cells are more common in non-TNBC. In breast cancer with significant VM formation, CD8+T lymphocytes are often less.
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