S9313B Study of Tumor Tissue Samples From Women With Early-Stage Breast Cancer Enrolled on Clinical Trial SWOG-9313

Evaluation of the Expression of the Cancer Stem Cell Marker ALDH1 as a Predictor of Adjuvant Chemotherapy Response in Breast Cancers of High Risk Women in SWOG-9313

RATIONALE: Studying samples of tumor tissue from patients with cancer in the laboratory may help doctors learn more about changes that occur in DNA and identify biomarkers related to cancer. It may also help doctors predict how patients enrolled on clinical trial SWOG-9313 will respond to doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide.

PURPOSE: This laboratory study is looking at tumor tissue samples from women with early-stage breast cancer enrolled on clinical trial SWOG-9313.

OBJECTIVES:

Primary

• To determine if ALDH1 positivity, as determined by IHC staining, identifies a poor prognostic subgroup of women with early-stage breast cancer who have been uniformly treated with adjuvant doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide on clinical trial SWOG-9313.

Secondary

• To determine associations of ALDH1 expression with other known factors that have been determined on clinical trial SWOG-9313, such as estrogen receptor (ER) status, HER2 status, TOPOII, cyclin E, and p27.
• To determine if ALDH1 positivity, as determined by IHC staining, identifies a poor prognostic subgroup within ER and HER2 subgroups in patients treated on clinical trial SWOG-9313.

OUTLINE: This is a multicenter study.

Tumor tissue samples from clinical trial SWOG-9313 are analyzed for ALDH1 expression by IHC.

DISEASE CHARACTERISTICS:

• Tumor samples collected from women diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer on clinical trial SWOG-9313 available

PATIENT CHARACTERISTICS:

• Not specified

PRIOR CONCURRENT THERAPY:

• See Disease Characteristics