HER3 over-expression and overall survival in gastrointestinal cancers.

Yadong Wang,Haiyan Yang,Guangcai Duan

doi:10.18632/oncotarget.5998

Abstract

Published studies on the association between human epidermal factor receptor 3 (HER3) expression and overall survival (OS) in gastrointestinal cancers have yielded conflicting results. The aim of this study was to explore the association of HER3 over-expression with OS in gastrointestinal cancers. A systematic search was performed through Medline/PubMed, Embase, Science Direct and Elsevier. The summary odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence interval (CI) was calculated to estimate the strength of the association. Overall, we observed that HER3 over-expression was associated with worse OS at five years (OR = 1.38, 95% CI: 1.04-1.82); however, HER3 over-expression was not associated with worse OS at three years (OR = 1.33, 95% CI: 0.97-1.84). The cumulative meta-analysis showed similar results. In subgroup analyses by tumor type, HER3 over-expression in gastric cancers was associated with worse OS at both three years (OR = 1.69, 95% CI: 1.28-2.25) and five years (OR = 1.74, 95% CI: 1.26-2.41). In conclusion, our results suggest that HER3 over-expression may be associated with worse overall survival in gastric cancers. Well-designed studies with a large sample size are required to further confirm our findings.

Highlights

Gastrointestinal cancers are a group of highly aggressive malignancies that constitute a major public health problem worldwide
Among the ErbB family, human epidermal factor receptor 3 (HER3) is a unique member because it lacks intrinsic tyrosine kinase activity and can’t form a homodimer; HER3 forms heterodimers with other members of the ErbB family to carry out its role in signal transduction [3]
In subgroup analyses by tumor type, HER3 over-expression in gastric cancers was associated with worse overall survival (OS) at both three years (OR = 1.69, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.28–2.25) and five years (OR = 1.74, 95% CI: 1.26–2.41) (Table 1)

Summary

Introduction

Gastrointestinal cancers are a group of highly aggressive malignancies (primarily including gastric carcinoma and colorectal cancer) that constitute a major public health problem worldwide. Studies have shown that HER3 plays a key role in the pathogenesis of various human solid tumors [5]. Zhang et al.’s study showed that HER3 over-expression was detected in 14 (13.7%) of 102 gastric cancer patients and in 2 (2.0%) of a non-tumorous group of 102 specimens (13.7% vs 2.0%, P < 0.01) [8]. Wu et al.’s study showed that HER3 over-expression was significantly increased in human gastric cancer compared with adjacent normal gastric tissues, as observed by both quantitative real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and immunohistochemistry (IHC) [9]

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