Implication of an Immune Score in Molecular Subtypes and Distant Metastasis of Breast Cancer: Comparison between Western and Chinese Han Patients

Seventy-one breast cancer patients with stages II and III breast cancer were included. They received four preoperative cycles of a weekly PCb (paclitaxel plus carboplatin) regimen. The purpose of this study was to examine the predictive value of the ER pathway for a response to chemotherapy using a gene microarray method. In addition, this study aimed to identify novel ER-related genes, which, combined with ER levels, would provide a robust multi-variable prediction of patient outcome to chemotherapy. Biopsy tissue was taken from patients received neoadjuvant chemotherapy. They received four preoperative cycles of a weekly PCb (paclitaxel plus carboplatin) regimen. The arrays were washed and stained according to the Affymetrix protocol (EukGE-WS2v4) using a GeneChip Fluidics Station 450 (Affymetrix). The arrays were scanned with the GeneChip Scanner 3000 (Affymetrix).