Nuclear and flow cytometric characteristics associated with overexpression of the c-erbB-2 oncoprotein in breast carcinoma

Summary The overexpression of the c-erbB-2 oncoprotein is now thought by most authors to be associated with adverse prognosis in breast carcinoma. In this study, we investigate the relationship between overexpression of the c-erbB-2 oncoprotein and nuclear size by morphometry in a series of 150 human breast carcinomas, comprising 65 cases of ductal carcinomain situ (DCIS) and 85 cases of invasive adenocarcinoma. The mean nuclear size for c-erbB-2 positive cases of DCIS was 54.8 µm² and invasive carcinoma was 52.1 µm² respectively, in contrast with 41.6 µm² and 42.5 µm² for c-erbB-2 negative cases of DCIS and invasive carcinoma respectively. Flow cytometric examination of DNA in a subset of 91 of these tumours showed no association between tumour cell aneuploidy and c-erbB-2 overexpression.