INTRODUCTION: Estrogen receptor (ER) status is not an optimal marker for response to adjuvant endocrine therapy since approximately 30% of patients with ER-positive tumors eventually relapse. Bcl-2 is regulated by ER and may thus be considered as an indicator of ER activity and a candidate supplementary marker to ER status.

PATIENTS AND METHODS: Tumor tissue from 257 patients with ER-positive breast cancer treated with tamoxifen was used for determination of the best threshold for immunohistochemical Bcl-2 assessment as prognostic marker. Subsequently, samples from the Danish patients of the randomized clinical trial BIG 1-98 comprising 1191 ER-positive patients treated with tamoxifen, letrozole or a sequence of the two were immunohistochemically stained for Bcl-2 to further explore the prognostic value of Bcl-2.

RESULTS: Two Bcl-2 levels were found to divide the population of the primary study into significantly different groups according to disease-free survival (DFS). Multivariate analysis confirmed the significance of the lowest level, and showed Bcl-2 to be an independent prognostic marker. Analysis of the Danish cohort of the BIG 1-98 confirmed that Bcl-2 was a significant predictor of DFS, independent of known prognostic markers. However, in an additional analysis of a subset of the Danish cohort of BIG 1-98 including only HER-2 normal patients, the effect of Bcl-2 was not statistically significant.

DISCUSSION: Low Bcl-2 can predict poor outcome of patients with ER-positive tumors treated with adjuvant endocrine therapy, whereas the use of Bcl-2 for determination of addition of chemotherapy was not supported by this study.