MCM2 and neoplasm: By analyzing the relationship between the expression of the investigated cell-cycle proteins and the known predictive and prognostic factors (i.e. cT and cN categories; histological type; nuclear grade; ER, PR and HER2 status; biological subtype) in pre-therapy core-biopsies (Table 2) we found significantly different expression of MCM2 and PHH3 according to cT categories: smaller lesions showed more pronounced tumor proliferation.