Summary Abnormalities of the EGF receptor and/or the related ERBB2 receptor occur in a significant proportion of cases of human breast cancer and are important influences in the behaviour of this tumour type.In this report we demonstrate by nucleic acid analysis and immunohistochemistry that the recently recognised third member of this gene Costa et al., 1988). Overexpression of the ERBB2 protein is also a marker of poor prognosis for node-positive disease (Slamon et al., 1987) and probably also for node-negative disease (Perren, 1991). More exciting, however, is the accumulating evidence that the ERBB2 receptor protein has potential as a target for antibody-directed therapy (Shepard et al., 1991) and other approaches such as inhibition of receptor dimerisation and tyrosine kinase function (Gullick 1990b Thirty six biopsy samples of non-neoplastic breast tissue

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