Association of tumor budding with tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes and prognosis in breast cancer patients

AIM: To investigate the relationship of tumor budding with clinicopathologic parameters, tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) of tumor microenvironment and the prognosis in breast cancer patients.METHODS: A total of 178 HE section samples were collected from the breast cancer patients treated with surgery in the First Affilated Hospital of Jinan University during Jan. 2012 to Dec. 2016. The tumor budding and stromal tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes were observed under light microscope. The correlation of tumor budding with the clinicopathologic status and TILs were analyzed by χ² test. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis and Log-rank test were used to estimate the disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS).RESULTS: High tumor budding level was associated with more positive lymph nodes, higher grade, and more lymphovascular invasion. In addition, the patients with higher tumor budding level showed fewer TILs, while the patients with lower tumor budding level had more TILs. Furthermore, the patients with higher tumor budding level had a worse disease-free survival and overall survival than those with lower tumor budding level.CONCLUSION: Tumor budding is significantly associated with adverse clinicopathological characteristics of breast cancer and negatively correlated with TILs. Therefore, tumor budding may serve as a potential biomarker to predict the prognosis of breast cancer.