Immunohistochemical study of tumor necrosis factor alpha ( TNF-α) in the tumor microenvironment sample of Iraqi breast cancer

Breast cancer is the most common malignant tumor and the leading cause of carcinoma death in women. the tumor microenvironment consist from cellular microenvironment, cytokines and chemokines. its plays an important role in tumor development such as initiation, progression, metastasis and drug resistance. it is becoming increasingly apparent that the malignant tumor progression is maintained by dynamic interplay between tumor cells and many distinct cell types existing in the adjacent microenvironment. objective of this study is to detect of tnf-α in tumor microenvironment in histological sections of breast cancer and compare it with that of benign breast lesions. this study included 32 patients with breast cancer and 21 patients with benign breast lesions, prognostic factors were registered including: age, histopathological subtype, degree of differentiation& stage of breast carcinoma. results revealed positive expression of tnf-α in 20 cases, while 12 cases were negative out of 32 samples of breast cancer. in benign lesions 11 cases were positive, while 10cases were negative. statistical analysis showed significant difference in rate of tnf-α expression between malignant breast samples and benign samples(p ≤0.05).