FISH of the one primary tumor and three metastases with 2+ HER2 overexpression revealed a low level of ERBB2 gene amplification in one apocrine carcinoma and corresponding metastasis.
The ErbB2 receptor tyrosine kinase is overexpressed in approximately 15-20% of breast tumors and associated with aggressive disease and poor clinical outcome. p130Cas represents a nodal scaffold protein regulating cell survival, migration and proliferation in normal and pathological contexts. p130Cas overexpression in ErbB2 human breast cancer correlates with poor prognosis and metastasis formation.
In subgroup with lymph node metastases who exhibit HER-2/neu overexpression might constitute potential candidates for new adjuvant therapy, such as humanized monoclonal antibodies.
The sellar and metastatic tumors in Case 2 resembled benign gonadotropic adenoma with oncocytic change; p53 accumulation, HER-2/neu overexpression, and HER-2/neu gene amplification were not present.
Furthermore, expression of kinase dead AKT2(181 amino acid methionine [M]), and not kinase dead AKT1(179M) or AKT3(177M), was capable of blocking invasion induced by either human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 (HER-2) overexpression or by activation of PI3-K. Taken together, these data indicate that AKT2 mediates PI3-K-dependent effects on adhesion, motility, invasion, and metastasis in vivo.
However, the data was controversial for HER2 overexpression and the prognosis of osteosarcoma, which is the most common primary malignant bone tumor, presents a therapeutic challenge in medical oncology due to its metastasis and poor response to current treatments.
Due to the heterogeneity of breast cancer and possible discordance in HER2 status between primary tumors and distant metastases, assessment of HER2 expression by noninvasive imaging is important.
Our results indicate that loss of FOXO1 promotes GC growth and metastasis by upregulating HER2 expression and that the HER2 expression is more critical to the induction of GC cell metastasis.
In patients with high-grade osteosarcoma without metastatic disease at presentation and treated with surgery and chemotherapy, the presence of increased levels of ErbB2 in tumor cells is associated with a significantly increased probability of event-free and overall survival.
In conclusion, our results indicate that expression of c-erbB-2 and p53 did not have any prognostic value in patients with early-stage breast cancer in which axillary lymph node metastasis is absent.
The impact of following factors on 5-year disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) was studied: age, sex, preoperative 7th nerve palsy, skin infiltration, pT, pN, surgical margin, type of parotidectomy and neck dissection, histology (SDC de novo vs. SDC ex pleomorphic adenoma, SDCexPA), intra/periparotid lymph nodes metastases, perineural invasion (PNI), extraparenchymal extension (EPE), and overexpression HER2.
In approximately 80% of patients, erbB-2 protein expression and gene copy number were similar in the primary tumor and locally recurrent or distant metastases.
No significant associations were observed between the UGT1A1*6 polymorphism and estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor, HER-2 expression status, menstrual status, or metastasis (all P > 0.05).
The relative risk of death due to recurrence was nearly identical for patients with either c-erbB-2 oncoprotein overexpression or distant metastases: 4.06 (1.4-11.8) and 3.94 (1.6-9.5).
Also, the serum HER2 level was significantly higher in bone metastatic cancer patients (14.3 +/- 6.3 ng/mL) than in non-metastatic patients (T2: 11.9 +/- 2.3 ng/mL, P = 0.003; T3: 12.2 +/- 2.8 ng/mL, P = 0.011).
A subset of breast cancer patients with high HER-2/neu levels eventually experience metastatic disease progression when treated with Herceptin as a single agent.
Thus, the c-erbB-2 gene product was more frequently expressed in high grade tumors (p less than 0.01), in high stage tumors (p less than 0.01), and nodal metastatic tumors (N.S. by Chi-square test).