Analysis of 246 sentinel lymph node biopsies of patients with clinical primary breast cancer by application of carbon nanoparticle suspension.

AIM: This study aims to explore the accuracy, specificity and laws of axillary lymph node metastasis predicted by sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) by comparing axillary lymph node status via SLNB and axillary lymph node dissection (ALND) with nanocarbon as the tracer. METHODS: Forty six patients were retrospectively analyzed. These patients underwent SLNB with nanocarbon as the tracer from March 2013 to April 2014. RESULTS: Two hundred and forty six patients of sentinel lymph node (SLN) were successfully detected. Among these patients, 8 patients had 1 SLN (3.25%), 33 patients had 2 SLN (13.41%), 46 patients had 3 SLN (18.70%), 51 patients had 4 SLN (20.73%), 40 patients had 5 SLN (16.26%), 24 patients had 6 SLN (9.76%) and 24 patients had 7 or more SLN (9.76%). The SLNB success rate of nanocarbon staining in the 246 cases was 99.59%, accuracy rate was 97.06% and sensitivity was 93.22%. Furthermore, false negatives were found in four patients, and the false-negative rate was 6.78%. The number of lymph node metastasis in the SLNB and ALND of early-stage breast cancer was analyzed. When the number of SLN dissection was 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or 7, the coincidence rate of lymph node metastasis for SLNB and ALND was 80.00, 84.36, 78.57, 88.89, 90.48, 80.00, 73.68 and 78.36, respectively. CONCLUSION: Sentinel lymph node biopsy performed using the nanocarbon staining method is simple, easy and reliable, and it can be used to predict the axillary status of breast cancer in the early stage.

Interleukin-12 activated CD8+ T cells induces apoptosis in breast cancer cells and reduces tumor growth.

During the past two decades, cytokines have emerged as key molecules to modulate innate and adaptive immunity and mediate anti-tumor activity. Although multiple cytokine types are implicated for such anti-tumor activity in several cancer types, it remains largely unknown in breast cancer. In this study, cytokines that are prior known for antitumor activity in different cancer types were examined against breast cancer using a 4T1 cells based xenograft-model. Our results showed Interleukin-12 (IL-12) (500ng/mouse) significantly suppressed the growth of tumors, while other cytokines showed minimal suppression. Subsequent molecular analysis by flow cytometry and immunohistochemistry confirmed the CD8+ cells infiltration and Interferon-γ (IFN-γ) production by them in tumor environment. In addition, we observed that IFN-γ production by activated CD8+ cells directly induced apoptosis in tumor cells, which together indicate that IL-12 causes CD8+ cells to infiltrate and secrete IFN-γ in tumor environment, which induce apoptosis in them and causes tumor growth suppression. Furthermore, we showed that lower dosage of IL-12 and chemotherapy drug tamoxifen combinations enhanced the tumor suppression as opposed to single treatments, and thereby propose an alternate option for high dosage associated effects for both drug and cytokine treatments.