E-cadherin is an intercellular adhesion marker, and has a membraneous expression pattern.  Its most common use is to help differentiate between DCIS (positive) and LCIS (negative).  It is less helpful in differentiating invasive ductal from invasive lobular, because invasive ductal carcinoma will not infrequently lose E-cadherin expression.  

 

If E-cadherin is positive in an invasive breast carcinoma, that would support ductal origin, but negative staining is not helpful / diagnostic between  a ductal or lobular process.  Practically, if one is having difficulty differentiating an invasive lobular vs. invasive ductal, it is possible that E-cadherin would be negative as the cells become dis-cohesive and lose the intercellular adhesion complexes.

 

Up to 15% of lobular lesions may exhibit some membraneous E-cadherin expression.  In such equivocal cases, p120 catenin or Beta-catenin may be helpful adjunct stains to help resolve discordance between morphology and E-cadherin expression.  As is the case with immunohistochemistry in general, a well devised panel of antibodies for a given differential diagnosis is often the best practice, when results or the diagnosis is not straight forward.

Brattauer, 2002.  S. Schnitt, UAMS Lecture, 2002.

E-cadherin is a sensitive and specific marker for immature erythroid cells.  It may be useful (similar to CD71) in identifying immature erythroid precursors, which may be difficult to differentiate from myeloblasts in certain circumstances.  CD34 and CD117 (blast markers) may be combined with CD71 and E-cadherin (erythroid markers) to achieve this goal.

E-cadheirn expression has also been studied in numerous other organ tissues individually (e.g. chromophobe renal cell carcinoma) and as part of panels.  Use of this stain in close conjunction with current medical literature is recommended.

Modern Pathology 24, 375-383 (March 2011)

 

Dabbs, D. J., Schnitt, S. J., Geyer, F. C., Weigelt, B., Baehner, F. L., Decker, T., et al. (2013). Lobular neoplasia of the breast revisited with emphasis on the role of E-cadherin immunohistochemistry. The American Journal of Surgical Pathology, 37(7), e1–11. doi:10.1097/PAS.0b013e3182918a2b 

 

Klein, G. E-Cadherin Is Functionally Involved in the Maturationof the Erythroid Lineage. The Journal of Cell Biology, October 1, 1995. pp. 1–7. 

 

Ohgami, R. S., Chisholm, K. M., Ma, L., & Arber, D. A. (2014). E-Cadherin Is a Specific Marker for Erythroid Differentiation and Has Utility, in Combination With CD117 and CD34, for Enumerating Myeloblasts in Hematopoietic Neoplasms. American Journal of Clinical Pathology, 141(5), 656–664. doi:10.1309/AJCP8M4QQTAZPGRP