Apoptosis and production of TNF-alpha by tumor-associated inflammatory cells in histological grade III breast cancer.

Tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha) is a cytokine that acts as an important mediator of the apoptotic process that also demonstrates selective citotoxicity against malignant breast tumor cells. In the present study, the presence of apoptotic tumor cells and the synthesis of TNF-alpha by inflammatory cells were investigated in tissue samples from grade III invasive breast cancer with long-term follow-up. In situ detection of tumor apoptotic cells was investigated by direct immuno-peroxidase of digoxigenin-labeled genomic DNA. The production of TNF-alpha and tumor cell proliferation were investigated by immunohistochemical procedures. Our data demonstrated that patients with a clinical history of cancer recurrence and metastasis presented a lower number of cancerous apoptotic cells, higher tumor proliferation rates, and lower TNF-alpha expression rates by inflammatory cells than what is observed among patients diagnosed with the same histopathological breast cancer type but in the absence of tumor recurrence and metastasis.