HER 2/neu protein expression in gastric cancer is associated with poor survival

Abstract

Abstract. The presence of Her 2/neu has been reported in gastric cancer, but its impact on patient survival remains unclear. The purpose of this study was to investigate the expression of Her 2/neu in gastric cancer. a total of 218 paired resected gastric cancer and corresponding normal specimens were collected. Her 2/neu protein expression was assessed by immunohistochemical staining. The correlation between Her 2/neu expression and patient clinicopathological parameters was evaluated and the prognostic significance of Her 2/neu expression was assessed by univariate and multivariate analyses. Forty-one out of 218 (18.8%) gastric cancer specimens showed Her 2/neu-positive expression. no relationship was found between membranous Her 2/neu expression and clinicopathological parameters. However, Her 2/neu expression was correlated with poorer overall survival (p<0.001). in multivariate analysis, Her 2/neu expression was a significant independent prognostic predictor of gastric cancer (p<0.001), and was associated with poor survival in gastric cancer patients. These data indicate that Her 2/neu may play a major role in the therapeutic management of gastric cancer. Introductiongastric cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide (1). Surgery remains the mainstay of any curative treatment. unfortunately, in advanced gastric cancer, currently available treatments including surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy have limited success. Since surgery is an insufficient treatment for most patients, developing active drugs against advanced gastric cancer is required (2,3).It has been reported that trastuzumab has significant antitumor activity related to Her 2/neu expression in gastric cancer cells and xenograft models (4-6). This finding has prompted investigation of the potential clinical benefits of trastuzumab in gastric cancer. However, conflicting results have been obtained in studies on Her 2/neu and its relationship with prognosis in gastric cancer. Some studies have reported that Her 2/neu overexpression is a poor prognostic factor for gastric cancer (7-10), while others have failed to find any association between Her 2/neu overexpression and prognosis (11,12). This discrepancy indicates that there may be factors othen than HER 2/neu expression levels influencing the effect of trastuzumab in gastric cancer. accurate assessment of Her 2/neu status is therefore essential to determine which patients may benefit from trastuzumab treatment.The purpose of the present study was to examine the expression status of Her 2/neu in gastric cancer and to evaluate whether Her 2/neu expression level is correlated with clinicopathological parameters and total prognosis or gender. Materials and methodsCase selection. Specimens were obtained from 218 patients who underwent curative resection (r0) of gastric cancer at the department of Surgical oncology of Sir run run Shaw Hospital, Zhejiang university college of Medicine, between July 1999 and august 2006. informed consent was obtained from all patients, and th...

Expression of undifferentiated embryonic cell transcription factor-1 (UTF1) in breast cancers and their matched normal tissues

“…Identification of biological markers ability to predict risk of prognosis in breast cancer is limited. To improve the clinical outcome of patients with advanced breast carcinoma, it is necessary to target novel biomarker genes, which appear to be involved in carcinoma development, as we had described previously [ 1 , 2 ].…”

A Reliable and Standardizable Differential PCR and qPCR Methodology Assesses HER2 Gene Amplification in Gastric Cancer

“…In gastric cancer (GC), HER2 gene amplification would result in tumors having both greater invasive and proliferative capacity [4], and several authors have suggested that HER2 may involve poor outcome in patients with gastric cancer [5][6][7]. Although an increase in the HER2 gene copy-number has been demonstrated in 10% to 30% GC patients, different authors and meta-analysis differ in terms of the actual number of patients overexpressing the protein [7][8][9][10]. Most of these discordances can be explained by the subjectivity of the techniques used to assess HER2 gene amplification and overexpression (ISH and IHC), scoring criteria [11], tumor heterogeneity and tissue sampling errors [12].…”