We examined the relevance of a pre-treatment single static view 99mTc-sestamibi scintimammography and expression of multidrug resistance proteins as predictors of response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy for invasive breast cancer. Forty-five patients affected by primary breast cancer underwent clinical examination, mammography, sonography, 99mTc-sestamibi scintimammography, and biopsy for histopathological diagnosis before neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Expression of MDR1 and MRP mRNA were determined by RT-PCR on fine-needle aspirations. Following completion of anthracycline-based chemotherapy, clinical, mammographic, sonographic and pathological responses were determined. 99mTc-sestamibi scintimammography predicted the reduction of tumor size measured by sonography and the pathological response according to Sataloff classification (p<0.05) and tend to predict pathological response according to Chevallier (p<0.1). A negative 99mTc-sestamibi scintimammography predicted chemoresistance with a specificity of 100%. Uptake of 99mTc-sestamibi was inversely correlated to the expression of MDR1 (p<0.05) in invasive ductal carcinoma. A pre-treatment single-view 99mTc-sestamibi scintimammography is an excellent predictor of MDR1 chemoresistance and was highly specific of a lack of pathological response to chemotherapy.

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