Upper urinary tract urothelial carcinomas (UUTUC) are infrequent and show an occurrence of about 5-10% of all urothelial carcinomas. In this study, we investigated the HER2 status of 171 UUTUC patients with nephroureterectomy. The number of patients is the largest of any HER2 study. All 171 cases were analyzed for both HER2 overexpression using immunohistochemistry and HER2 gene amplification u...

BACKGROUND Gastric cancer is usually diagnosed in an advanced stage of disease and treatment options are sparse. Trastuzumab was recently approved for metastatic or locally advanced carcinomas arising in the stomach or in the gastroesophageal junction in patients with HER2-positive tumors. However, data on the frequency of HER2-positive cases among Brazilian patients are limited. Our aim was to...

BACKGROUND A few retrospective studies have indicated that neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) in breast cancer may change biomarker profiles of the primary tumor. Little is known about the status of HER-2 gene of the synchronous nodal metastases when that of the residual tumor undergoes negative conversion in a neoadjuvant setting. CASE PRESENTATION We describe a female patient with left breast c...

We previously reported that the human HER2 gene encodes the intronic microRNA mir-4728, which is overexpressed together with its oncogenic host gene and may act independently of the HER2 receptor. More recently, we also reported that the oncogenic miR-21-5p is regulated by 3' tailing and trimming by the non-canonical poly(A) polymerase PAPD5 and the ribonuclease PARN. Here we demonstrate a dual...

Breast cancer is a heterogenous disease. Gene expresssion studies have identified five distinct molecular subtypes of breast cancer. The use of gene expression profiling is currently limited in many clinical settings, and hence histopathological markers such as estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR), and HER2 are used as surrogates for the moleculer subtypes, which divide breast tum...

BACKGROUND Patients with early stage breast cancer with same treatment strategy can have markedly different outcomes. Human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2/nue) gene amplification or the subsequent overexpression of protein has been proved to be associated with patient's outcome and response to anthracyclins-based regimens. OBJECTIVES This study assessed prognostic value of HER2/nue ...

BACKGROUND Adjuvant therapy comprising the HER2 receptor antagonist trastuzumab is associated with a significant improvement in disease-free and overall survival as compared to chemotherapy alone in localized HER2-positive breast cancer (BC). However, a subset of HER2-positive tumors seems to respond less favorably to trastuzumab. Various mechanisms have been proposed for trastuzumab resistance...

BACKGROUND Human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) is a quantitative assay for selecting breast cancer patients for trastuzumab therapy. However, current HER2 FISH procedures are labor intensive, manual methods that require skilled technologists and specialized fluorescence microscopy. Furthermore, FISH slides cannot be archived for long term st...

Accumulating evidence indicates a functional crosstalk between the HER2 (ErbB2) tyrosine kinase and the TGF-β signaling mediated by its serine/threonine kinase receptors. In HER2-overexpressing breast cancer, this crosstalk results in increased cancer cell proliferation, survival and invasion, accelerated cancer progression and metastasis in animal models, and resistance to chemotherapy and HER...

CONTEXT HER2/neu overexpression is observed in many cancers including pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. Although immunohistochemistry remains the basic method for evaluating HER2/neu protein expression, significant information regarding gene status cannot be assessed. DESIGN Using tissue microarray technology, fifty histologically confirmed pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas were cored twice a...