Objectives: One of the novel benefit of immunohistochemestry  in human malignancy ( in addition to its major role in confirming the diagnosis)  is to discover  specific  therapeutic targets in cancer cells, so this study was  conducted to identify immunohistochemical expression of bcl2 in breast cancers and to correlate its expression with expression of hormone receptors (estrogen and progesterone) to provide histologic informations  that may   help in clinical practice.

Materials and methods: This is a retrospective study that done  in the histopathology laboratory of at alwasity teaching hospital for orthopedic and plastic surgery at Bagdad , 52 paraffin embedded tissue  blocks for cases diagnosed as primary  mammary carcinoma were retrieved from multiple private sectors. From each bloke four histological sections were made, one stained with hematoxyline and eosin to examine under light microscope and the other three histological sections were processed for immunohistochemical staining with antibodies to estrogen receptor, progesterone receptors and bcl2.The result of immunohistochemestry were statistically evaluated.

Results: Of 52 samples with breast cancer 42(80.7%) were ductal and 10(19.2%) were lobuler. The study showed that 26(50%) of total sample were positive for estrogen receptors  and 34(65.3%) were progesterone receptors positive. Regarding bcl2 ,26(50%)of total sample  were immune reactive for the latter ,and there is a highly significant statistical relationship between the expression of bcl2and  both (estrogen & progesterone  receptors).

Conclusion: Bcl2 immunohistochemical expression can be found in breast cancer and its expression is strongly correlated with positive estrogen and progesterone receptor status and the former   can be used as a predictive marker that predict positive immunehistochemical expression of hormone receptors (thereby hormone receptor therapy) and vice versa and can be used as a quality control marker., this conclusion raises the need to standardize immunohistochemistry for this application,

 Keywords: Breast cancer, Bcl2, Estrogen receptor, Progesterone receptor