 |
| |
|
UM HIR NEWS (9TH March 2012)
|
| |
|
First Award Winner of the Breast Journal Awards 2012
|
| |
 |
Dr Ng Char Hong, from the Department of Surgery, UMMC, and a team member of the UM-MoHE HIR-funded Breast Cancer Research programme, has been selected as the First Award Winner of the Breast Journal Awards 2012 based on his abstract "Do Clinical Features and Survival of Single Hormone Positive Breast Cancers Differ from Double Positive Hormonal Breast Cancers".
|
|
Dr. Ng will be going to Dallas for the American Society of Breast Disease Conference held in Dallas, Texas, April 12-14, 2012. This conference will be attended by the world's leading breast specialists and the three-day program will cover contemporary issues and emerging science focused on breast cancer prevention, risk assessment, screening, diagnosis, treatment, and quality of life.
|
|
|
Award winners will be invited to submit an article for expedited publication in The Breast Journal.
|
| |
|
Syabas to Dr. Ng and the UM Breast Cancer Research Team for yet another accolade.
|
| |
| THE WINNING ABSTRACT |
| |
|
Do clinical features and survival of single hormone positive breast cancers differ from double positive hormonal breast cancers?
|
| The significance of the single hormone receptor positive phenotype which is still poorly understood and the use of hormone therapy has been found to be less effective in the single hormone receptor positive phenotype and they have a survival outcome midway between double positive and double negative phenotypes. The aim of this study was to investigate the difference in patient and tumor characteristics and survival between double-receptor positive (ER+PR+), double receptor negative (ER-PR-) and single receptor positive (ER+PR- and ER-PR+) breast cancer in an Asian setting. 1992 patients with newly diagnosed stage I to IV breast cancer between 2003 and 2008, and where information on ER and PR were available, were included in this study. The majority of patients had ER+/PR+ tumors (n=903: 45.3%), followed by 741 (37.2%) ER-/PR-, 247 (12.4%) ER+/PR-, and 101 (5.1%) ER-/PR+ tumors. Using multivariate analysis, ER+/PR- tumors were 2.4 times more likely to be grade 3 compared to ER+/PR+ tumors. ER+/PR- and ER-/PR- tumors were 82% and 86%, respectively less likely to be grade 3 compared with ER-/PR- tumors. There were no survival differences between patients with ER+/PR+ tumors and ER-/PR+ tumors. However, ER+/PR- tumors have poorer survival followed by ER-/PR- tumors with worst survival. Adjuvant hormonal therapy with tamoxifen was found to have identical survival advantage in patients with ER+/PR+ and ER-/PR+ tumors whereas impact was slightly lower in patients with ER+/PR- tumors. In conclusion, we found that ER+/PR- tumors were more aggressive and have poorer survival when compared to ER+/PR+ tumors. However ER-/PR+ have similar survival to ER+/PR+ tumours implying that ER-/PR+ tumours do not exist and are due to technical failure of the immunohistochemical assay. |
|
|
