Breast carcinoma: a report on the potential usage of the CC chemokine RANTES as a marker for a progressive disease.

Background: High incidence and intensity of RANTES (CC chemokine) expression were noted in advanced breast carcinoma. Objective: To present two cases of breast carcinoma patients in whom RANTES expression was analyzed inparallel to disease progression. Results: Although no evidence of malignancy was detected in the axillary lymph nodes of the two patients, their disease progressed. The expression of RANTES in both patients was positive at diagnosis and predicted the clinical course. Conclusions: These results, combined with our previous findings on the correlation between RANTES expression and advanced breast carcinoma, suggest that the assessment of RANTES expression may be useful for the identification of patients with apparently poor prognosis who may benefit from aggressive treatment. The above results call for large-scale studies by numerous research groups to determine the prognostic value of RANTED expression.