Breast cancer response to adjuvant chemotherapy in correlation with erbB2 and p53 expression.

The expression of the erbB2 and p53 proteins was examined by immunohistochemistry in a series of 81 cases of primary breast carcinomas treated with an adjuvant chemotherapy with a median follow-up of 5 years. Expression of erbB2 was present in 19 cases (23%), 50% of them with more than 70% of positive tumoral cells. Expression of p53 was present in 32 cases (39%), 50% of them with more than 30% of positive tumoral cells; coexpression of erbB2 and p53 was observed in 11 cases (13.5%). Disease-free and overall survival of the patients were correlated with the number of positive lymph nodes (p = 0.08, p = 0.015). No significant trend was observed in response to adjuvant chemotherapy in correlation with erbB2 or p53 expression or both, whatever the level of expression.