Detection of Surface Antigen 17-1A in Breast and Colorectal Cancer

Abstract

Substantial progress has been made in detecting cell surface or intracytoplasmatic antigens to identify spread tumor cells with monoclonal antibodies (MAbs). The 17-1A antigen is already used as a target for specific immunotherapy in colorectal cancer. The purpose of this study was to compare the expression of 17-1A antigen in colorectal tumors versus breast cancers. MAb against the epithelial-specific antigen (ESA) and a routine staining technique were used to detect the 17-1A antigen in 100 cases of colorectal and 111 cases of breast cancer. The antigen expression of each tumor entity was examined by light microscopy on paraffin sections. Thirty six of the formalin-fixed paraffin sections of breast cancer were compared with their corresponding frozen sections. Evaluation was realized by a histological score (grade 0-9) considering the distribution and the staining intensity. We found an antigen expression of 17-1A in colorectal cancer quantified at 7.1+/-1.8 and at 4.5+/-2.5 for breast cancer in our score. Comparing paraffin sections and frozen sections in the 36 cases of breast cancer, the score was 5.5+/-2.3 in the paraffin and 8.1+/-1.9 in the frozen section group. Our results confirmed the high expression of 17-1A cases of in colorectal carcinoma. Furthermore, 17-1A is expressed in the majority of breast carcinomas, revealing a high difference between paraffin and frozen sections. As a result, a specific immunotherapy with MAbs against 17-1A antigen in minimal residual stages of breast cancer might be considered.

Gene expression profiles in primary ovarian serous papillary tumors and normal ovarian epithelium: Identification of candidate molecular markers for ovarian cancer diagnosis and therapy

“…21 In most adult epithelial tissues, enhanced expression of Ep-CAM is closely associated with either benign or malignant proliferation. Among mammals, Ep-CAM is an evolutionarily highly conserved molecule, 29 suggesting an important biologic function in epithelial cells and tissue.…”

“…Included in these group of genes are laminin, claudin 3 (Table II). TROP-1/Ep-CAM, encoding for a transmembrane glycoprotein previously found to be overexpressed in various carcinoma types including colorectal and breast 21 and where antibody-directed therapy has resulted in improved survival, 22 was 39-fold differentially expressed in OSPC compared to NOVA (Table II). The second profile was represented by 170 genes that were highly expressed in NOVA and underexpressed in OSPC (Table III).…”

Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition: A Hallmark in Metastasis Formation Linking Circulating Tumor Cells and Cancer Stem Cells

“…Unfortunately, there is a great interlaboratory variability regarding the techniques used, and no tumor marker identified so far is specific enough to detect rare CTCs. The most widely used approach relies on the epithelial molecule – EpCAM – the expression of which is present in 60–100% of breast cancers [118,119]. However, the study of Sieuwerts et al [120 ]showed that EpCAM-based CTC detection does not recognize breast cancer cells belonging to a normal-like subtype, which is characterized by aggressive behavior.…”

The carcinoma-associated antigen EpCAM upregulates c-myc and induces cell proliferation

“…EpCAM was shown to be a reliable diagnostic and prognostic marker for carcinomas (Tandon et al, 1990;Chaubal et al, 1999;Gastl et al, 2000), and is a target in tumour therapy trials (Riethmu¨ller et al, 1994). Increasing amounts of EpCAM also correlated with lower life expectancy of cancer patients (Packeisen et al, 1999;Piyathilake et al, 2000). Recently, the leucocyteassociated immunglobulin-like receptor 1 (LAIR-1) was identified as a novel extracellular ligand of EpCAM (Meyaard et al, 2001).…”