Her-2/neuGene Amplification in Familial vs Sporadic Breast Cancer

Abstract

We compared the incidence of Her-2/neu amplification in patients with and without a family history of breast cancer and correlated gene status with clinicobiologic and prognostic features in sporadic and familial cases. Of 108 patients, 28.7% had gene amplification. Among 96 cases with family history information available, 28 had an affected first-degree relative. The gene was amplified more frequently in familial than in sporadic cases (13/28 [46%] vs 14/68 [21%]; P = .01). Among familial cases, amplification was associated with adverse clinicobiologic features (poorly differentiated tumors [P = .05], larger tumors [P = .05], more lymph nodes involved [P = .04], and DNA aneuploid [P = .02] and highly proliferative tumors [P = .005]), and the relapse (P = .02) and disease-related death (P = .05) rates were higher than in cases without amplification. Among sporadic cases, amplification was not associated with significantly different disease features, except for a higher incidence of DNA aneuploid tumors (P = .01), percentage of S-phase tumor cells (P = .006), and lower proportion of estrogen (P = .001) and progesterone (P = .002) receptors. Her-2/neu amplification was observed more frequently among patients with a family history of breast cancer, in whom it was associated with adverse clinicobiologic features and a worse clinical outcome.

Comparative study of Her-2, p53, Ki-67 expression and clinicopathological characteristics of breast cancer in a cohort of northern China female patients

“…30 It is not clear why p53 mutations are associated with Her-2 gene amplification. 39,40 Ki-67 is a nuclear protein that is commonly used for the detection and quantification of proliferating cells. 28 In agreement with the observations by others, 35,50,51 it was found that Ki-67 positively connected with Her-2 overexpression in this study, suggesting that Her-2 overexpression might upregulate the expression of Ki-67.…”

HER2 Amplification Has no Prognostic Value in Sporadic and Hereditary Ovarian Tumours

“…It was observed that patients with HER2 -amplification in breast cancer tissue showed shorter disease-free time intervals and they benefit from therapy with the anti-Her-2/neu antibody, Herceptin [6,19,25]. …”