BACKGROUND Despite a typically good response to first-line combination chemotherapy, the prognosis for patients with advanced ovarian cancer remains poor because of acquired chemoresistance. The use of targeted therapies such as trastuzumab may potentially improve outcomes for patients with ovarian cancer. HER2 overexpression/amplification has been reported in ovarian cancer, but the exact perc...

BACKGROUND The use of microarray technology has resulted in a new classification of breast cancer according to gene expression profiles. None of the reports published so far using this new classification has stratified the studied tumors by histology or size. MATERIALS AND METHODS This study was restricted to the ductal infiltrating variety only, and to pT1 size using the immunohistochemical ...

The human epidermal growth factor receptor gene ERBB2 (HER2) is located on chromosome 17 and amplified in approximately 20% of invasive breast carcinomas. 1,2 Due to the availability of effective anti-HER2 therapies, the prognostic significance of HER2 gene amplification, and the predictive value of HER2 status with regard to response to chemotherapy, laboratory testing for protein overexpressi...

Background: Human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) is over-expressed in breast, ovarian, gastric, and prostate cancers used as a tumor marker the diagnosis of cancer. Monoclonal antibodies have been diagnostic therapeutic tool against HER2. Because difficulties associated with stability complexity construct high cost antibody production, we aimed to investigate, cloning, expression HER...

We are currently conducting clinical trials of E1A gene therapy for patients with ovarian cancer. The adenovirus type 5 E1A gene suppresses growth of ovarian cancer cells that overexpress HER-2/neu (HER2) and growth of some--but not all--that express low HER2. In HER2-overexpressing cells, suppression by E1A is predominantly by down-regulation of HER2, but the mechanism in low HER2-expressing c...

The current molecular targets in breast cancer (BC) clinical trials were identified before the advent of the genomic era and their relevance was confirmed and validated by the introduction of gene profiling. Pioneering molecular analyses and repeated data validations on different gene platforms have thus far served to define 5 subtypes of BC based on their gene signature: luminal A, luminal B, ...

In this study the detection of HER2 gene amplification was evaluated using Fluorescence In Situ Hybridization (FISH; PathVysion) in comparison with Multiplex Ligation-dependent Probe Amplification (MLPA), a PCR based technique. These two methods were evaluated on a series of 46 formalin fixed paraffin embedded breast carcinomas, previously tested for protein overexpression by HercepTest (groupe...

BACKGROUND HER2-positive breast cancer sensitivity to anthracyclines is enhanced when topoisomerase IIα (TOP2A) is co-amplified under both adjuvant and metastatic settings. However, the relationship between anthracycline sensitivity and TOP2A amplification in HER2-positive breast cancers in neoadjuvant settings is not known. METHODS The TOP2A gene status was examined by FISH in biopsies from ...

BACKGROUND Molecular detection methods for HER2/neu gene amplification include fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) and competitive PCR. We designed a quantitative PCR system utilizing fluorescent hybridization probes and a competitor that differed from the HER2/neu sequence by a single base change. METHODS Increasing twofold concentrations of competitor were coamplified with DNA from ce...

NIST standard reference material (SRM) 2373 was developed to improve the measurements of the HER2 gene amplification in DNA samples. SRM 2373 consists of genomic DNA extracted from five breast cancer cell lines with different amounts of amplification of the HER2 gene. The five components are derived from the human cell lines SK-BR-3, MDA-MB-231, MDA-MB-361, MDA-MB-453, and BT-474. The certified...