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2012
HER-2/neu Expression in Archival Non-Small Cell
Lung Carcinomas (NSCLC) Using FDA-Approved Herceptest and Clinical
Correlation. Daniela Scheurle, M Jahanzeb, R Aronsohn, L
Watek, R Narayanan, Ctr for Molecular Biology and Biotech, Boca
Raton, FL; Florida Atlantic Univ, Boca Raton, FL; Boca Raton
Community Hosp, Boca Raton, FL; Comprehensive Cancer Care
Specialists, Boca Raton, FL.
HER-2/neu (HER2) is a 185 kDa glycoprotein related to the
epidermal growth factor receptor that is overexpressed in 25-30% of
primary breast carcinomas and has been shown to be a prognostic and
predictive factor (associated with a poor clinical outcome, and
predictive of response to Herceptin). It is also overexpressed in a
subset of patients with other tumor types to a variable extent,
depending upon the testing method used, but its prognostic
implications are not clearly established. Recently, Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) approved a standard diagnostic kit HercepTest
(DAKO Corporation Carpintoria, California) for detection of HER2
overexpression in clinical specimens. We examined the expression of
HER2 in archival paraffin-embedded specimens (n=81) of NSCLC,
testing tumor and normal tissue from the same patients. HER2
overexpression was not detected in the normal epithelium in a
majority of samples (74/81). It was, however, detected in 22 (27%)
of tumor samples at 2+ or 3+ level including adenocarcinomas,
squamous cell carcinomas and large cell carcinomas. An additional 26
samples had 1+ overexpression. By subtracting the expression in the
few normal tissues from the corresponding tumor score, a marginal
reduction to 21% was observed in the 2+ and 3+ subset. Important
clinical characteristics of these patients such as clinical stage,
pathological stage, histology and survival were looked at for
possible clues to a prognostic association with HER2 overexpession
but no clear pattern emerged which may or may not be due to small
numbers of patients in each category. Correlative data will be
presented.
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