Variation in tumor biology in African-American (AA) and Caucasian (CAU) women with breast cancer is poorly defined. Activated leukocyte cell adhesion molecule (ALCAM) is a bad prognostic factor of breast cancer yet it has never being studied in the AA population. We tested the hypothesis that ALCAM expression would be markedly lower in cases of AA breast cancer when compared to CAU.

Cases of breast cancer among AA (n = 78) and CAU (n = 95) women were studied. Immunohistochemical staining was used to semi-quantitatively score ALCAM expression in tumor and adjacent non-tumor breast tissues. Clinico-pathological characteristics including histological type, histological grade, tumor size, lymph node metastasis, estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR), and HER2-neu status were abstracted, and their association with ALCAM expression tested.

Univariate analysis revealed that the level of ALCAM expression at intercellular junctions of primary tumors correlates with histological grade (AA; p = 0.04, CUA; p = 0.02), ER status (AA; p = 0.0004, CAU; p = 0.0015), PR status (AA; p = 0.002, CUA p = 0.034) and triple-negative tumor status (AA; p = 0.0002, CAU; p = 0.0006,) in both ethnic groups. Multivariate analysis demonstrated that ethnicity contribute significantly to ALCAM expression after accounting for basal-like subtype, age, histological grade, tumor size, and lymph node status. Compared to CAU tumors, the AA are 4 times more likely to have low ALCAM expression (p = 0.003).

Markedly low expression of ALCAM at sites of cell-cell contact in primary breast cancer tumors regardless of differentiation, size and lymph node involvement may contribute to the more aggressive phenotype of breast cancer among AA women.