The low overexpression rate of HER-2/neu (8.0%) in advanced CRC limits the potential for further investigation of regimens involving trastuzumab, despite evidence suggestive of activity.
Altogether, these observations demonstrate that Memo-1 is an important downstream regulator of HER2-driven CRC cell migration and invasion through connecting extracellular signals from membrane to the cytoskeletal actin network.
These are of recent interest in colorectal cancer with studies indicating that HER2 overexpression might increase resistance to anti-EGFR therapy and may be potentially targeted.
Our findings suggest that the frequency of HER2 overexpression or amplification was low in Chinese CRC patients, and provide a rationale for further evaluation of HER2 in CRC based on the HERACLES criteria and the HER2 diagnostic criteria for gastroesophageal adenocarcinoma.
Our results thus suggest that [fam-] trastuzumab deruxtecan warrants further study as a potential treatment for CRC tumors that express HER2 protein in the absence of HER2 amplification.
The aims of this review are to recall the important results achieved with the use of HER-2 inhibitors in both gastric and colorectal cancer, and to discuss on the updates available on the role of HER-2 as prognostic and predictive factor in these malignancies.
The expression of c-erbB-2 mRNA and c-neu were assessed in 25 human non-metastasising colorectal cancers and 34 primary metastasising colorectal cancer and their liver metastasis by in situ hybridisation and immunohistochemistry respectively.
The expression of erbB-2 and epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) in colorectal cancers has been suggested to have diagnostic and prognostic significance.
The incorporation of molecular profiling into routine clinical practice has already been adopted in some tumor types, such as human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) testing in breast cancer and KRAS genotyping in colorectal cancer, providing a guide to treatment selection that is not afforded by histopathologic diagnosis alone.
We have used SW48 and LIM1215 human colon cancer cell lines, quadruple wild-type for KRAS, NRAS, BRAF and PI3KCA genes, and their HER2-amplified (LIM1215-HER2 and SW48-HER2) derived cells to perform in vitro and in vivo studies in order to identify novel therapeutic strategies in HER2 gene amplified human colorectal cancer.
Testing for HER2 should be offered to all patients with metastatic CRC because the occurrence of this biomarker is unlikely to be predicted based on main clinicopathological features.
Other drugs have been designed to target additional deregulated pathways in CRC, such as MAPK (mitogen-activated protein kinase)/PI3K-AKT (phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase-AKT serine/threonine kinase)/mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin), HER-2 and 3 ( human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 and -3), and BRAF.
Alterations affecting KRAS (27.3%) were significantly underrepresented in ERBB2-amplified samples compared with wild-type CRC samples (51.8%), and ERBB2- or ERBB3-mutated samples (49.0% and 60.8%, respectively) (P<.01).
Our findings indicate a significant strong association of cytoplasmic Her-2/neu expression with low grades and membranous Her-2/neu expression with high grades of colorectal cancer.
This has important implications not only for understanding the pathophysiology of these cancers, but also for treatment since anti-EGFR antibodies are in clinical use for CRC and EGFR is a major ErbB2 heterodimeric partner.