Serum Level of HER-2/neu in Patients with Gastric Cancer: Correlation with HER-2/neu Overexpression in Gastric Carcinoma Tissue

Abstract

Serum HER-2/neu (c-erbB-2) levels in patients with gastric cancer were evaluated by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and tissue levels of HER-2/neu in the same cohort were determined by immunohistochemistry. Nine (16%) of 57 gastric carcinomas had an overexpression of HER-2/neu detected immunohistochemically. Of these 9 patients, 6 had elevated serum HER-2/neu levels, while 45 of 48 tissue samples with negative staining exhibited normal serum HER-2/neu levels. These results indicated that overall accuracy, positive predictive value, and negative predictive values of their serum measurements were 89, 67 and 94%, respectively. Serum levels of HER-2/neu were correlated with tissue overexpression of HER-2/neu in patients with gastric cancer.

Status of c‐erbB‐2 in gastric adenocarcinoma: A comparative study of immunohistochemistry, fluorescence in situ hybridization and enzyme‐linked immuno‐sorbent assay

“…Several studies have examined the pre-operative serum p105 levels of patients with gastric cancer, 27 breast cancer 20 -24 and ovarian cancer. 3,26 In these studies, the positive rates were 16%, 8 -19% and 3-25% for gastric, mammary and ovarian cancers, respectively.…”

“…There have been several studies examining serum p105 levels of patients with breast cancer and ovarian cancer 3,18 -26 but only 1 study on gastric cancer. 27 The aims of the present study were (i) to determine the exact frequency of c-erbB-2 abnormalities in gastric cancers, (ii) to clarify whether the same mechanism of gene amplification and protein overexpression functions in gastric cancer as in breast cancer and (iii) to examine whether c-erbB-2-related protein levels in serum are a relevant clinical marker for gastric cancer patients. This study was conducted with a view to the future introduction of Herceptin therapy for gastric cancer patients.…”

Frequencies of HER‐2/neu overexpression relating to HLA haplotype in patients with gastric cancer

“…Furthermore, we reported that the serum levels of HER-2/neu were correlated with the status of HER-2/neu expression in carcinoma tissue and the serum levels of HER-2/neu may be used to predict the status of HER-2/neu expression. 28 Interestingly, Ogoshi et al 29 reported that HLA-A2-positive patients with gastric cancer had a low risk of lymph-node metastasis and a better response to postoperative immunotherapy with a non-specific immunomodulator, PSK, compared to HLA-A2-negative patients. Furthermore, HLA-A2 alleles were found to be associated with clinical remission by immunotherapy in patients with melanoma.…”

Tyrosine kinases and gastric cancer

“…Secreted erbB2 and erbB3 splicing variants have been identi®ed for human gastric cancer cells (Katoh et al, 1993;Scott et al, 1993). Elevated level of soluble EGFR and erbB2 proteins, possibly resulting from alternatively spliced transcripts or proteolytic cleavage, are detectable in the serum of gastric cancer patients (Choi et al, 1997;Kono et al, 2000;Perng et al, 1994;Molina et al, 1997). As discussed above, soluble tyrosine kinase receptors may play a regulatory role for receptor signaling.…”