Expression of c-erbB-2 protein in papillary thyroid carcinomas

Abstract

c-erbB-2 protein expression was investigated immunohistochemically in frozen thyroid tissue specimens from 42 patients using a polyclonal sheep antibody. c-erbB-2 immunoreactivity was detected in 12 out of 17 papillary carcinomas, while no c-erbB-2 protein immunostaining was seen in cases of follicular adenoma (five cases), follicular carcinoma (five cases) or medullary carcinoma (one case), nor in cases of non-neoplastic tissue, including normal thyroid tissue from tumour-bearing glands. RNA was extracted from 51 thyroid tissue samples from 34 of the above patients, and c-erbB-2 mRNA was analysed by slot-blot hybridisation. c-erbB-2 mRNA was detectable in all samples, but papillary carcinomas and lymph node metastases showed significantly higher levels of c-erbB-2 mRNA compared to non-neoplastic tissue. The present demonstration of positive c-erbB-2 immunostaining in papillary thyroid carcinomas is contradictory to previous findings on formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded material, and emphasises the importance of tissue quality for c-erbB-2 protein detection. Images Figure 1 Figure 3

Expression and clinical significance of erb-B receptor family in hepatocellular carcinoma

“…c-erbB-4 protein expression in carcinoma nests was usually equal to or less than in noncancerous lesions. A similar tendency was obtained for other carcinomas such as those of the breast, colon, ovary, bronchus, and head and neck (Srinivasan et al, 1998), although the opposite tendency was obtained for thyroid carcinoma (Haugen et al, 1996), endometrial carcinoma (Srinivasan et al, 1999), astrocytoma (Srinivasan et al, 1998) and cholangiocellular carcinoma (Ito et al, in press). Among them, breast carcinoma has been comparatively well-studied for c-erbB-4 expression, which is stronger in more differentiated breast carcinoma cell lines than in the more aggressive ones (Plowman et al, 1993;Suo et al, 1998), in normal epithelia than in carcinomas (Srinivasan et al, 1998Suo et al, 1998), and in cases with steroid receptors than in those without them (Riese et al, 1996).…”

“…Travis et al observed that breast carcinoma expressed c-erbB-3 more intensely and diffusely than the adjacent normal glands which were usually weakly or moderately positive for this protein (Travis et al, 1996). Haugen et al showed that normal follicles of the thyroid were all negative for c-erbB-3, whereas all types of thyroid carcinoma expressed this protein with very high incidence (Haugen et al, 1996). The results of these studies including ours are similar in that they show c-erbB-3 expression to be more diffuse and/or more intense in the carcinoma nest than in normal or benign lesions.…”

“…Thus far, of the four receptors, the expression of EGF-R and c-erbB-2 has been investigated in various neoplasms, including malignancies of the liver and biliary tract (Brunt and Swanson, 1992;Collier et al, 1992;Nakapoulou et al, 1994;Lee and Pirdas, 1995;Kira et al, 1997;Terada et al, 1998). The other two receptors, c-erbB-3 and c-erbB-4, have only been studied in depth for a few neoplasms (Sanidas et al, 1993;Simpson et al, 1995;Shintani et al, 1995;Haugen et al, 1996;Travis et al, 1996;Bobrow et al, 1997;Bodey et al, 1997;Chow et al, 1997;Ibrahim et al, 1997;Srinivasan et al, 1998Srinivasan et al, , 2000Suo et al, 1998;Freiss et al, 1999;Haussler et al, 1999;Kapitanovic et al, 2000;Kew et al, 2000), and little is known about their expression in hepatic malignancies. In this study, we investigated the expression of all four components of this family in a large series of HCC to evaluate their clinical significance and to identify the factors reflecting the development of this carcinoma.…”

Suppression of breast cancer cell growth by a monoclonal antibody targeting cleavable ErbB4 isoforms

“…Some observations indicate that ErbB4 receptor is downregulated in various cancers, or that its expression is associated with favorable prognostic markers, such as estrogen receptor expression (Srinivasan et al, 1998;Witton et al, 2003). On the other hand, ErbB4 has been reported to be expressed in high levels in several cancers such as thyroid (Haugen et al, 1996), ovarian (Furger et al, 1998) and breast cancer (Srinivasan et al, 1999), as well as medulloblastoma (Gilbertson et al, 1997), and ependymoma (Gilbertson et al, 2002). Furthermore, the significance of ErbB4 expression levels for clinical outcome is conflicting (Sundvall et al, 2008a).…”

Formation of Neu/ErbB2-induced mammary tumors is unaffected by loss of ErbB4

“…In contrast to studies on overexpression and/or activation of EGFR, ErbB2 and ErbB3, research studies comparing ErbB4 overexpression to outcome of carcinomas are sparse and somewhat contradictory (Gullick, 2003). ErbB4 overexpression is associated with poor prognosis for thyroid cancer and childhood medulloblastoma (Haugen et al, 1996;Gilbertson et al, 1997). Somatic mutations in the ErbB4 kinase domain were detected at a low frequency in gastric carcinomas, colorectal carcinomas, non-small lung cancers and breast carcinomas (Soung et al, 2006).…”