Aikian A. The role of M1 and M2 macrophage phenotypes in the immunopathogenesis of breast adenocarcinoma in the presence or absence of metastases in regional lymph nodes

The dissertation presents a new solution and theoretical generalization of the scientific problem, which consists in the established relationships between molecular and biological types of breast adenocarcinoma, or breast cancer (BC), their individual pathomorphological features and metastasis to regional lymph nodes, and the representation therein of CD68+ tumor-associated macrophages (TAM) and CD163+ TAM to assess their prognostic and immunopathogenetic role. The main conclusion is that in contrast to luminal types of breast cancer (which in metastasis were characterized by individually relatively reduced average amounts of CD163+ TAM: type A, individually relatively increased average amount of CD163+ TAM: type B HER2+, and a significant decrease in CD68+ and CD163+ TAM: type B and HER–), and also in contrast to non-luminal HER+ breast cancer, which increased the number of CD68+ TAM during metastasizing, p<0.0001, triple-negative BC during lymphatic metastasizing is characterized by an increase in CD68+ and CD163+ TAM (p<0.0001, p<0.0005), which confirms the dependence of TAM corresponding phenotypes (and, accordingly, the functional types M1 and M2) and the molecular biological type of breast cancer. Thus, it was demonstrated for the first time that different quantitative changes of CD68+ and CD163+ TAM of the primary breast cancer accompany tumors in their metastases to regional lymph nodes, depending on the molecular and biological type of breast cancer, using the approach of studies in stratified randomized and highly specialized research groups.